Jenna Rocca - the Amateur Project MRP

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Jenna Rocca

Ryerson Student # 500209657

Communications and Cultures Master's Research Project

Prepared for:

Professor Elizabeth Trott, Dept. of Philosophy, Ryerson University

and Professor Christopher Innes, Canada Research Chair in Performance and Culture,

York University

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Dedication

This project is dedicated to those who have ever caught the incurable "bug," and who

continue to bear it, for its only true antidote is complete submission.

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the unwavering support and the

inspirational guidance of Dr. Elizabeth Trott, and the patience and belief of Dr.

Christopher Innes.

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Contents

Jenna Rocca ______________________________________________________________________ 1

Ryerson Student # 500209657 ________________________________________________________ 1

Communications and Cultures Master's Research Project __________________________________ 1

Prepared for: _____________________________________________________________________ 1

Professor Elizabeth Trott, Dept. of Philosophy, Ryerson University __________________________ 1

and Professor Christopher Innes, Canada Research Chair in Performance and Culture, __________ 1

York UniversityDedication ___________________________________________________________ 1

Dedication________________________________________________________________________ 2

Acknowledgements ________________________________________________________________ 2

Introduction ________________________________________________________________ 6

A) Project statement _______________________________________________________________ 6

B) Project Format __________________________________________________________________ 6

i) Amateur Institutions and Research Opportunities ______________________________________________ 6

ii) the Film _______________________________________________________________________________ 7

C) Project justification ______________________________________________________________ 7

i) Background _____________________________________________________________________________ 7

ii) Existing amateur theory and research________________________________________________________ 9

Adrian Rendle _____________________________________________________________________ 9

Peter Brook ______________________________________________________________________ 12

Roger Scruton and Peter Brook on the Irrational ________________________________________ 15

Eugenio Barba ____________________________________________________________________ 16

Research resources in the world of amateurs ______________________________________ 18

a) The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto _______________________________________________ 18

i) the Club _______________________________________________________________________________ 18

ii) First contacts __________________________________________________________________________ 19

iii) Interview Subjects ______________________________________________________________________ 20

b) The Tarragon __________________________________________________________________ 21

i) the Theatre ____________________________________________________________________________ 21

ii) First Contact/Research Opportunity ________________________________________________________ 22

iii) Interview Subjects ______________________________________________________________________ 23

c) Other interviewees ______________________________________________________________ 24

i) Sonia Norris ____________________________________________________________________________ 24

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ii) ACT II STUDIO __________________________________________________________________________ 25

iii) John Goddard and Theatre Ontario ________________________________________________________ 26

The Person/Performer: the Amateur Experience ___________________________________ 27

a) Self-Actualization _______________________________________________________________ 27

i) Self Development _______________________________________________________________________ 29

ii) Creativity _____________________________________________________________________________ 30

iii) Community ___________________________________________________________________________ 31

The Power of Amateur Theatre through Creativity and Love _________________________ 32

Works Cited ________________________________________________________________ 36

Appendix 1 - Interview Questions _______________________________________________ 37

Appendix 2 - Interview Transcripts on "Self Development" ___________________________ 38

David Skene-Melvin _______________________________________________________________ 38

Dora Rust-D'Eye __________________________________________________________________ 39

Jane Carnwath ___________________________________________________________________ 39

John Goddard ____________________________________________________________________ 39

Julia Lederer _____________________________________________________________________ 41

Lorna Kelly and Bill Whiteacre _______________________________________________________ 44

Marianne Fedunkiw _______________________________________________________________ 44

Mike Spence _____________________________________________________________________ 44

Morna Wales with Carol Miles ______________________________________________________ 45

Rob Prince, John Rammell, and Karina Rammell in Conversation ___________________________ 45

Ruth Morawetz ___________________________________________________________________ 47

Wilson West _____________________________________________________________________ 47

Appendix 3 - Interview Transcripts on "Creativity" _________________________________ 50


Dora Rust-D'Eye __________________________________________________________________ 51

Jane Carnwath ___________________________________________________________________ 52

John Goddard ____________________________________________________________________ 53

Julia Lederer _____________________________________________________________________ 55

Lorna Kelly and Bill Whiteacre _______________________________________________________ 57


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Mike Spence _____________________________________________________________________ 59



Sonia Norris _____________________________________________________________________ 62

Appendix 4 - Interview Transcripts on "Community" ________________________________ 67


Jane Carnwath ___________________________________________________________________ 67

John Goddard ____________________________________________________________________ 68

Julia Lederer _____________________________________________________________________ 68

Ken Judd ________________________________________________________________________ 69

Lorna Kelly, Bill Whiteacre in conversation with Jenna Rocca ______________________________ 69


Mike Spence _____________________________________________________________________ 71



Ruth Morawetz ___________________________________________________________________ 76

Sonia Norris _____________________________________________________________________ 76

Appendix 5: Why the Arts and Letters Club? _______________________________________ 79

Appendix 6: Information on the Individual Interview Participants _____________________ 80

Appendix 7: Note about Public Copies of this Project ________________________________ 83

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Introduction

A) Project statement

This research project explores the dynamics of amateur theatre and its unique benefits

to those who voluntarily participate in any and/or all capacities, on or back-stage.

B) Project Format

i) Amateur Institutions and Research Opportunities

There are some very formalized institutions and practices in place in Toronto that

celebrate and promote performance on the level of the amateur, ones which are very

rigorously and passionately maintained. I have been a part of some of these, and in

developing this project I have delved into their operations and the minds of their

participants.

At the Tarragon Theatre I had the opportunity to work alongside professionals who have

developed programs to cultivate and support the practices of amateur youth through

their annual Paprika festival. At the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto many members

and amateur theatre participants stepped forward to tell me about what they do and

why, and how there is another level to theatre with which they are able to engage, a

level that has had little been examination in theory. Most theory only addresses what

happens when the stage curtains are drawn open. I did find help with my efforts to

capture the world of the amateur in the writings of Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba.

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ii) the Film

My project included the creation of a short video documentary of the amateur world of

theatre, a brief insider‟s perspective through conversation and interviews. I began with

establishing my contacts in two specific locations, The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto

and The Tarragon Theatre. While I had the opportunity to work with the Tarragon on

their Paprika festival, I also spoke with one person there about working with amateurs.

This interviewee has also worked as an amateur.

The material in my film captures interviews with some of these people. I also sat down

with many of the participants in theatrical productions at the Arts and Letters Club and a

few other representatives of Toronto's amateur institutions. Most are exclusively

amateur, and all offered unique insight into their thespian hobbies and production

endeavours.

The film is best viewed in conjunction with the reading of this paper, but can also be

observed as a separate entity.

C) Project justification

i) Background

For me, theatre is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. From my

earliest memories I can pinpoint milestones by their connection to some form of

performance, formal or unintended. It is likely that the religious influence of my

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upbringing helped build the foundation of my mental framework in relation to theatrical

experiences. As a young member of a Catholic family, I was brought weekly to a

strange form of theatre that was described to me as the most important and integral

event of the week and of life, even though I later identified its philosophical limitations.

During these Masses -- the first theatrical presentations in which I participated -- a

reverence was instilled in me, and the power of the presentation awakened a kind of

subliminal understanding that all things in life flow through the channel of the stage (or

alter, as one might have it).

With this understanding of theatre in relation to its religious and spiritual potential, I felt

armed to harness powers similar to those of a priest, and soon began performing

"Mass" in my own bedroom, fully equipped with parishioners (dolls and action figures)

and the Body of Christ (Ritz crackers). The obvious distinctions between my fantasy

Mass and a real Mass then seemed to be merely superficial.

Time passed and the philosophical distinctions between religious ritual and theatrical

expression became more apparent to me. I found myself recreating presentations that

resonated more profoundly with my true world-view than the Catholic faith had.

Throughout high school and university I pursued a place for myself on the amateur and

community stage, and created art and performances that conveyed something about

me and those around me. I began to learn how to harness those powers of

communication of which, in my early years, I was only acutely aware. This tool of

communication, the theatrical presentation at the level of community, had a purpose

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that evaded others, and that until now, I will argue, has been sidestepped by academic

theorists of theatre. The purpose is that of expanding personal horizons of confidence,

creativity, and emotional ideas -- the horizons of contacting others, through the illusive

imaginary world of “being others” and not oneself.

ii) Existing amateur theory and research

Adrian Rendle

While theatre as a professional practice has been examined in earnest, and productions

investigated as well as those who are vocationally drawn into it, I have been

investigating the profession with questions that concern the world of amateur theatre

and productions. I have had little luck with written works. Few scholars have even

acknowledged the amateur as an active theatrical contributor. Adrian Rendle

(Everyman and his Theatre, 1968) is one of the exceptions. In his chapter on "Getting

Ambitious" he writes:

The idea of 'the amateur' in the theatre has emerged as a curiously strong

community activity, more so in English-speaking societies than elsewhere

(Rendle, 7).

The void in these formal studies of theatre exists where amateur theatre is not merely a

stepping stone1 to the professional, but an end in itself. Rendle only examines the

1 "So many of the professional have graduated from their university amateur status" (Rendle 7).

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amateur as she2 pertains to the professional realm, and how she may either serve the

professional or ultimately become professional himself. But Rendle does add, however

problematically:

To say that the amateur has no function in the theatre is equivalent to saying

that he has no real place in artistic progress, simply because he performs

only to amuse himself (Rendle 112).

This statement is a perfect example of the kind of mentality so many theorists display

with regard to amateurs. They dismiss the amateur and his pursuits. While suggesting

that the professional is somehow doing his job as an act of selflessness, I can say with

certainty that the professionals with whom I spoke are also amusing themselves, even if

it is their job to do so in a variety of forums. The distinction between the amateur and

the professional is not of concern to me here. What is of concern is the fact that the

amateur is completely disregarded in formal theory and observed as a means for some

people to merely pass the time in a manner akin to knitting. The notion that "the

amateur has no function in theatre" is fallacious, (which Rendle rightly notes), since she

is very explicitly doing the same job as a person who is paid to do perform. Rendle's

examination is thorough, but his context is the progressive relation between the amateur

and the professional:

The number of thoughtful, untried scripts remains large enough to encourage

the hope that the amateur bent on contributing to the general theatre scene

has a highly important function (Rendle 112).

Rendle refers to the world of amateur productions and performers as a practice, the

function of which is to facilitate movement towards the professional, as if spending time

2 I shall henceforth use this female indirect subject.

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as an amateur is simply a stepping stone, not an end in itself. My findings have proven

otherwise. Many "professional" acting jobs count as union credits without offering pay,

yet performers jump at the opportunity for the work, whether they are amateur or

professional.

Rendle is, quite significantly, the only author I came across who devotes an entire book

to the practices of the amateur. He does effectively, although dismissively, scratch the

surface of what I sought to uncover in my project:

There is a great difference between the degree of concentration which is

possible for one who is devoting his life to it and that which is possible for

one who is giving whatever time he can spare to it; and it is precisely a

recognition of this difference that has impelled some amateurs to discard

their part-time status and become wholly involved in becoming an actor. On

the other hand, many partly-trained students wilt in their academies and

decide to satisfy themselves in part-time theatre. There is a great deal of

two-way traffic where training is concerned (Rendle, "Proper Training," 41).

Indeed, being one of those who "wilt in academies" I have found that the training offered

formally is consistently narrow-minded, and inhibiting to me as a performing artist. Does

this mean I should forever be observed as a mere hobbyist? Most writings suggest it

should. But Rendle does express the opportunity for valid expression and artistic

progression in the amateur:

The notion that amateurs aim to entertain not the public but only their friends

is a mistaken one. For those who take it upon themselves to form part of a

theatre-conscious society there is a definite job to do, rather than an

opportunity to indulge in a self-congratulatory pastime (Rendle 112).

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Often in the amateur field, it is also more possible to produce less popular or even

experimental plays which he says "in the ordinary theatre, are not regarded as good

commercial speculations" (Rendle 11). I have only ever thrived in the amateur world

where there were not any formalized restrictions or dictates. Although Peter Brook (the

Empty Space, 1968) and Eugenio Barba (Beyond the Floating Islands, 1985) are both

professionals, and have written work on the subject of amateurs in relation to theatre,

they too have only acknowledged the existence of the amateur in relation to

professional practice. None the less, their works do shed light on what can be

accomplished in theatre of any sort, amateur or otherwise. Thus we can begin to see

the amateur as a creator of some import and relevance. It was with these two that I

began my formal pursuit of this project.

Peter Brook

Peter Brook's thorough and sensitive rant, the Empty Space (1968), is a detailed and

impassioned itemization of what constitutes successful acting, direction, stage

production and thus, theatre. It is a beautiful attempt that takes Brook on a quest to

articulate what specifically is going on when actors step onto a stage (or any "empty

space") and an audience seeks out the privilege to watch. He treats the theatre, his life

work, as a delicate, precious and difficult creature that can easily and unwittingly be

corrupted or compromised, and is more often than not. Brook divides his study into four

parts, four types of theatre organized in ascending order: the deadly, holy, rough,

immediate. Classifying and describing each type of theatre, and how they can and do

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work together results in a volume that was clearly intended to be all-encompassing

while still asking many more questions than are answered.

Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity,

surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and

what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have?

What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

(Brook 40).

By investigating these special properties I was able to see how amateur theatre has the

power to do some things that professional theatre cannot.

What became apparent as the most significant aspect of Brook's book, distinguishing it

from other works on theatre, was its definition of theatricality as the opportunity to ask

"if..." Amateur theatre allows for the fertile freedom to really play with the 'if' in ways that

simply are not permissible in the professional and Brook identifies the "if" as integral to

good theatre3. The theatre is not a place for the meek at heart, especially when one is

literally on the stage itself, vulnerable to a group of people interested only in being

entertained. What happens to a person when suddenly she is thrust into this mysterious

and evocative place, to stand before an audience, and be at the mercy of other

performers for the first time in her life? While previous studies and performance

studies looks at what goes on between the performance and the audience, my concern

3 Brook's final conclusion is that the real distinction between theatre and life is simply the possibility for

"if," to "go back again," to experiment with wild abandon, to play.

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is only with what goes on between the performance and the performer (or collaborator),

on and offstage4.

The cumulative form of theatre‟s power is christened by Brook as the “Theatre

Immediate.” With this he champions the important link that must be established between

the performers and their audience, one that generates an integral immediacy and

fervour in what occurs on the stage, and to which the actor must be wholly sensitive.

Many of my interview subjects attested to this importance. Brook's Empty Space is a

quest to articulate what specifically is going on when actors step onto a stage and an

audience seeks out the privilege to watch. For my purposes, what he calls the “Holy

Theatre” is the most relevant.

Brook describes the Holy kind of theatre as a practically magical accomplishment, "the

theatre of the Invisible" (42), he says, which can lift us in ways that only the religious

ritual can lift the superstitious and believing, except, a theatre-audience or actor does

not need to believe in literal magic. Brook hints at the religious ritual and mystical

potential of the theatre that I mentioned earlier. Though drawing us closer to what

theatre in general can accomplish he still poses more questions: "Today we have

exposed the sham. But we are rediscovering that a holy theatre is still what we need.

So where should we look for it? In the clouds or on the ground?" (64). The answer

appears to lie somewhere between. Brook importantly suggests that an element of the

irrational must come into play in successful theatre: "the 'happening' effect--the moment

4 This study explores the experience of those who collaborate as amateurs in the "backstage" facility as

well. I did not only interview performers and when I speak of "amateurs" I refer to them as a group that includes all facets of a theatrical production.

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when the illogical breaks through our everyday understanding to make us open our

eyes more widely" (90). This is key in understanding the motivations of the amateur.

Roger Scruton (Modern Culture, 1998) sheds more light on this concept when he

alludes to a similar kind of irrational process for understanding art in his chapter titled

"The Aesthetic Gaze."

Roger Scruton and Peter Brook on the Irrational

In "The Aesthetic Gaze," his chapter on the observation and appreciation of art, Scruton

addresses the contribution of the irrational in the enjoyment of beauty:

A rational being [...] takes pleasure in the mere sight of something: sublime

landscape, a beautiful animal, an intricate flower, or a work of art. This form

of pleasure answers to no empirical interest: I satisfy no bodily appetite or

need in contemplating the landscape, nor do I merely scan it for useful

information. The interest is disinterested (Scruton 35).

He explains that since animals do not consume art or contemplate beauty for its own

sake, humans are unique in their ability to delight in the irrational. This is no less true in

the enjoyment of theatre both for the audience and the participants. He later

elaborates:

Aesthetic objects [...] invite us to an 'interest of reason' - a self-conscious

placing of ourselves in relation to the thing considered, and a search for

meaning which looks neither for information nor practical utility, but for the

insight which religion also promises: insight into the why and whither of our

being here (Scruton 39).

It is for this reason, Scruton says, that an atheist can be moved by a religious sculpture

or architectural structure (34). This is the kind of effect that Brook says holy theatre can

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bring about in a "rough" and indefinite way. Brook explains that in order to obtain the

holy in theatre, the contemporary atmosphere necessitates the incorporation of the

rough, a frankness by which theatre can present something holy and practically magical

without purporting to be capable of magic: "we must open our empty hands and show

that really there is nothing up our sleeves, “only then can we begin" (Brook 97). I have

found that this kind of purity and “roughness” is readily accessible in the amateur and is

somehow a large draw for many of the participants who thrive in a boundless world of

experimentation and imagination unfettered by the restrictions of a pay check. Similar

to Brook, the work of Eugenio Barba is significant in identifying the irrational powers of

theatre and their necessity in good theatre

Eugenio Barba

Eugenio Barba's Beyond the Floating Islands is a collection of his writings which also

seek to define the nature and power of theatre. In it, he touches on the notion of

irrationality in discussing the power of silence in theatre: "In the end, this silence

transmits something, unbeknownst to either person, in an unexpected way, according to

a logic which is superior to the logic of all pedagogical knowledge" (Barba 17). He

elaborates:

Today many scholars are demonstrating that there exists a private, secret

context within scientific discovery which does not fall within the belief that

ideas evolve rationally. Paradoxes, arguments which seem irrational,

prejudices, personal passions, and the tenacity to search, sometimes

combine to create new harmony between solitary challenge and its openly

convincing results (Barba 16).

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Similar to Brook's notion of holiness, Barba's evaluation places emphasis on the unsaid,

the absence of reason, the presence of abstraction, which in a sense are exactly what

Brook conjures in his discussion of holiness. Likewise, Scuton's description of the awe

and wonder that can be brought on by art is comparable only to that holiness found in

religion:

It is scarcely surprising [...] that there should attach to the products of a high

culture the same sense of profound mystery and ineffable meaning that is the

daily diet of religion. Our lives are transfigured in art, and redeemed of their

arbitrariness, their contingency and littleness (Scruton 40).

Brook also places a heavy emphasis on this kind of effect which can be produced by

theatre in his discussion of the holy. He calls it up later in his final statements in the

chapter on the “Immediate," 5 the culmination of the whole book. Barba also invokes the

spiritual in the notion of the 'kernel' of truth and of expression that Brook says is the

ultimate by-product of profoundly moving theatre6, and the culmination of its great

powers.

Barba takes these notions as the guiding principles in his instructional passages but

ultimately the heart of his writings shines through in his internal reflections:

What was my first day in theatre? Perhaps it was the day of separation, the

day I lost my mother tongue and made myself into a foreigner, in a country

which was not the country of my birth. It was undoubtedly the day when,

5 The entire work of Brook's book ultimately comes down to this as he explains: "This is how I understand

a necessary theatre; one in which there is only a practical difference between actor and audience, not a fundamental one" (134). 6 Brook says that only the kernel left from an extraordinary theatrical moment is that to which one clings in

order to give meaning to his own life (136). It is the ultimate effect of the performance.

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without realizing it, I became a "floating island," a traveler of speed, citizen of

a single country--my body-in-life (Barba 19).

When Brook asks where the holy in theatre can be found, "in the clouds or on the

ground?" (Brook 64), perhaps Barba has the answer in his self-identification as a

"floating island," both fertile and similar in quality and power to the earth and the earthly,

the rough, while still maintaining the lightness and spirituality to float above ground,

freely travelling to whatever location is willed with the help of the irrational freedom of

the imagination and the empty space.

Barba then asks what is "beyond the floating islands?" He explains that other people

are islands like himself, which can be visited and with which one can interact. It is

implicit that the answer exists in that empty space. This is what led me to ask what

happens there and to see for myself. I took these questions and ideas to the people of

the Arts and Letters Club, the Tarragon Theatre, and others, and found some specific

examples.

Research resources in the world of amateurs

a) The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto

i) the Club

The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto is a social club located at 14 Elm St. just off of

Yonge in Toronto. It is self described in a flier as "people who love the arts. The

majority of our members are professionals; the remainder are enthusiasts who enjoy

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being involved with the artistic community" ( see Appendix 5: Why the Arts and Letters

Club?). Founded in1908 by journalist Gus Bridle as an arts society for cultured Toronto

gentlemen professionals (McBurney 2), over its history this social club has welcomed

such notable members as Robertson Davies, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Arthur

Lismer, Northrop Frye, Marshall McLuhan, Betty Oliphant, Christopher Plummer, and

Bill Glassco (the founder of the Tarragon Theatre) to name but a few. In 1985 it happily

opened its doors to female members (McBurney 138) and it has not looked back.

Theatre has always been an integral component of the Club's activities, and to this day

the mostly amateur theatre group produces a large-scale production annually. This is in

addition to many other performances and dramatic readings that take place throughout

the year and even on a weekly basis if one were to include the regular open-mike

events. There are also a plethora of other recreational art-related activities that are

organized and enjoyed by the approximately six hundred members.

While many of the members who partake in the theatrical activities at the club are

amateurs, there are a few who have enjoyed careers in the arts and in theatre who

continue to contribute to the productions as semi-retirees. This was of particular

interest to seeing as they are not forced to work with amateurs yet they still volunteer to

do so to great success.

ii) First contacts

I attended a production that the Club puts on annually, called the Spring Revue and to

my great surprise was met with the highest calibre of amateur presentation I have ever

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seen. I was subsequently given the opportunity to meet several of the performers and

others who worked on it. In conversation I was able to talk about my project and ask

about their participation in some short filmed interviews. I drew up a list of questions

(see appendix A), and began to contact various people who expressed an interest in the

project. They received the questions before their videotaped interview.

iii) Interview Subjects

It was a privilege to collect many interviews with those who have found some kind of

repose in the divine clutches of theatre without explicitly pursuing a career in the

professional realm, and many willingly bore their souls before my camera.

In my investigations I was compelled by the similarities between my own experiences

and those of the people with whom I spoke. I was happily met with a multi-faceted

mirror of my feelings and instincts toward theatre and had the opportunity to reflect

again on that power that emits from the stage or 'the Empty Space‟. Like Brook and

Barba, and in most cases without any formal training or experience as performers,

these "amateurs" proved to be thoroughly articulate in identifying the mysterious

process and allure of the stage, treating it with as much import as they do their careers,

if not more. In the cases of those who are retired, the Arts and Letters Club and its

theatre arm constitute a formidable part of their daily lives, one they could not do

without. What particularly interested me is the effects the theatre had on their personal

and social lives -- an enrichment that did not arise from any of their other endeavours,

even if they currently were or had been involved in professional theatre.

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b) The Tarragon

i) the Theatre

The Tarragon Theatre is a mainstay of Toronto's cultural landscape and theatrical

tapestry. Founded by Bill Glassco in the early seventies, "to bring more careful

dramaturgical and production practices to the mounting of new Canadian plays"

(Johnston 1), Tarragon's roots were set down not without struggles, and to this day

ticket sales cover only 37% of production costs (Tarragon Theatre "Support"). Yet

Glassco pressed on, for in his words: "I wouldn't say we were in reaction against a

theatre company so much as against the audience in Toronto. We wanted to shake up

the audience, and make them realize there was something else," (Johnston 2). In

observing the process of creating the theatre that Tarragon does and its final products

on their two stages I was able to see the tradition that Glassco initially set in motion

continuing to this day, and I really came to understand the extent to which it is truly a

"playwright's theatre," unique in that sense and in others:

Glassco [...] was broadening Toronto's understanding of what a Canadian

playwright was. While the Factory Lab and the recently-opened Toronto Free

Theatre were producing plays by and about each other, exploring realities

and fantasies of young modern Torontonians, Tarragon and Theatre Passe

Muraille were bringing their audiences portrayals of Canadians other than

themselves: spastics, Newfies, Quebecois, farmers, nineteeth-century

settlers (Johnston 21).

Today the theatre is helmed by Creative Director Richard Rose, who oversees a diverse

annual program of professional productions from both established and up-and-coming

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Canadian and international artists. A large part of its focus is centred on new artists and

playwrights and the fostering thereof. Its philosophy, as stated by Rose:

Tarragon Theatre‟s mission is to create, develop and produce new plays and

to provide the conditions for new work to thrive. To that end, the theatre

engages the best theatre artists and craftspeople to interpret new work;

presents each new work with high quality production values; provides an

administrative structure to support new work; develops marketing strategies

to promote new work; and continually generates an audience for new work

(Tarragon Theatre "Mission").

Tarragon is unique in that it offers many opportunities for those who may be considered

amateur to possibly branch into the professional, and even just to develop artistically

through their many different programs and grants which aim to recruit and support new

Toronto talent. The Paprika Festival is just one example of one of these programs.

ii) First Contact/Research Opportunity

Annually, the Tarragon Theatre hosts and produces a festival of short plays developed

at the Tarragon by up-and-coming youngsters pursuing theatre recreationally and

professionally. It is a fairly elaborate event housed in the rehearsal spaces at Tarragon.

This year I was asked by Julia Lederer, the producer and administrator of the festival, a

young woman about my age who has her own desk in the Outreach department at

Tarragon, to act as stage manager for a number of the performances which this year

ran over the course of two weeks. This festival is a "pay-what-you-will" event, thus not

for profit, intended strictly to foster the growth of young artists. This is just one example

of the programs in place that foster amateur theatre at Tarragon, its

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venue is used extensively to support the creation and development of new

works by other theatre artists, through space made available for rehearsals,

workshops, and productions, and our long-standing partnership with the

Paprika Festival (Tarragon Theatre "Mission").

The young artists are invited to participate through a process by which they submit

material they wish to work on which is evaluated for its potential. If invited to workshop

and develop the plays along with some of their peers, the final product is the Paprika

Festival which gives them the opportunity to showcase these works. This festival offered

me a unique opportunity to work as a stage manager and take on a lot of responsibility

alongside these fine young amateurs. Lederer had known me from my previous

theatrical work as a director for whom she had once auditioned. It was also a wonderful

experience to be there in support of the young artists, who were very talented and much

of the work that was presented was quite promising and inspired. My role to them was

as a mentor of sorts, a role I was happy to fill.

iii) Interview Subjects

The Paprika festival was a very exciting and interesting experience as it allowed me to

witness firsthand the extraordinary lengths to which Tarragon goes to remain to true to

its mission and foster a very strong network of playwrights and new artists on the

amateur level. I was also able to exist with these amateurs as they experienced and

demonstrated this medium's great powers and its repercussions that reach past the

closed curtain in one‟s offstage life. I later spoke with Lederer about the program, and

she elaborated on the incredible benefits of offering young people a forum in which to

experiment with theatre.

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c) Other interviewees

i) Sonia Norris

Sonia Norris is a professional theatre practitioner and teacher who also discussed the

importance of this kind of work with young people. She helms many different projects

which are predominantly professional, with only a couple of exceptions wherein she was

given unique insight into the world of the amateur. While Norris declares upfront that as

a rule she is "not interested in theatre as therapy," interestingly, she was able to both

enable and witness its transformative power. In one particular project, her desire was to

bring the power of amateur theatre to marginalized Zimbabwean youth, "that nobody

cares about," who are poverty-stricken, and bring their voices to an international theatre

festival in Harare, wherein no native Zimbabweans were actually performing, only

international artists. In doing so, she "found that these groups were unbelievably

responsive and phenomenally hungry for anything because Zimbabwe is a country in

total crisis and they have absolutely nothing" (from Sonia Norris's interview in the

section "Creativity"). This project proved to her how much theatre can bring to

amateurs.

She devised a show from scratch with a small ensemble for the next year. This was key

in the performers‟ ultimate sense of accomplishment and artistic possibility which she

says was “transformative.” They wrote a piece that reflected the circumstances of its

creation, about "do they have dreams? How do you have dreams and hopes if you

have no future? And yet if you don't have both, how do you get out of bed in the

morning?" Norris‟s strong implication was that this experience may literally have

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changed the course of some of these young artists‟ lives, just from having participated

in this amateur venture.

She discusses the notion of "engaging" them in this venture. While this is significant in

the discussion of peer collaboration, it also appears in Brook's work on Immediate

theatre, and is integral in the exploration of the experiences of the members of the Arts

and Letters Club whose testaments in interviews are explicitly demonstrative of this

“linkage” that is brought on by collaboration. Norris describes the state of interaction

and creation, which only calls to mind the image of the floating islands, whereby

participants can find themselves on their own patch of fertile ground melding together

temporarily with those of others.

ii) ACT II STUDIO

Vrenia Ivonoffski is the Artistic Director of ACT II STUDIO,7 at Ryerson University.

Through email correspondence, I was able to gather her commentary on this subject as

well. In the ACT II STUDIO Calendar 2009 - 2010, under "Who are we?" (3), they are

described as

a creative drama centre dedicated to inspiring individual creativity and to

giving the older adult a chance to be heard through work that is artistically

unique and of value to the wider community [and] a warm, nurturing

community of individuals aged 50 plus who come from all walks of life to

learn, create, perform, and participate in theatre and related activities.

7 An accredited member of the Toronto Association of Acting Studios (T.A.A.S.).

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Vrenia's thoughts on my project only further reinforced the notions that amateur theatre

has a use and a place that is not currently identified, especially as she explained how

rewarding she has found it herself as a professional:

I would venture to say that I have had far more impact personally on far more

people in the world doing what I've done at ACT II STUDIO than I would have

having a traditional "professional" directing career. (Actually - I am working

professionally).

Although I was unable to interview her for my film, I think it is important to note that even

prominent cultural institutions like Ryerson University has sub-sectors devoted to the

amateur in which even the professionals involved have found something that is not

offered elsewhere.

iii) John Goddard and Theatre Ontario

John Goddard is both a member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, and Executive

Director of Theatre Ontario, a Toronto-based institution designed to help amateurs in a

variety of ways. Goddard has also previously been involved administratively with

professional theatre in Toronto as actor, treasurer, president, and director for his whole

life. He explains that he has "been involved in amateur theatre" for most of his life, "it's

a passion. It's something that I need to express. It's something that you can't

suppress." While he discusses the amateur world as a perfect training ground for

professionals, he also explains how exciting working as an amateur for its own sake can

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be and offered valuable insight into the mind of an amateur who may be doing it for the

first time much later in life.

The Person/Performer: the Amateur Experience

a) Self-Actualization

In the course of interviewing, some common themes pertaining to specifically self-

improvement and personal growth were uncovered. As Adrian Rendle notes, even the

oldest English `Dramatic Society,` formed in 1847, had this aim: `the objects of the

Society are to cultivate a taste for Standard Dramatic Literature and Poetry and be a

source of mutual improvement and amusement to its members" (Rendle 3). Throughout

my interviews, it was repeatedly indicated that the amateur world of theatre provided an

outlet to the creative impulses that otherwise find no release which ultimately gives the

participants a fuller life and an excellent opportunity for ongoing self-development. Many

of the interviewees are not involved in any other activities that give that certain kind of

fulfillment to their lives. They indicated that without the opportunity to collaborate and

be creative, to expel some of their passionate energies in a group setting or on the level

of a larger community, their day-jobs would not be tolerable. Therefore a great deal of

value is placed on their amateur theatre involvement. Like Vrenia Ivonoffski of ACT II

STUDIO indicated to me in an email, these individuals are finding the greatest creative

fulfillment in amateur theatre even if they are themselves theatre professionals. To

some extent, the existence of authority and structure in their "real" lives or careers

seemed somehow inhibiting or ultimately fruitless. These restricting conditions were

referenced again and again (particularly at the Arts and Letters Club), in comments

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relating to dull and monotonous routines, jobs, and people. Such work colleagues were

described as unlike the other "folk" who are involved in amateur theatre

Specific reference to the kinds of individuals who participate in amateur theatre sprung

up again and again. Some people referred to the freedom and the unspoken

understanding that exists between like-minded theatre-participants who are known to

readily goof off and "play." Ultimately, the setting of the amateur world of "play" offers

these people the unique opportunity to explore some of the darker and lighter sides of

humanity to which they otherwise may never be exposed. The act of creating the

Spring Revue, or of participating in improv workshops and open-mike events offers

them an opportunity to realize parts of themselves and of the world that are somehow

concealed from the rest of society, and from those who are not involved in theatre or

other passionately driven vocations.

The amateur group in nearly all of these cases offers the members an opportunity to

take a journey with other like-minded individuals to learn something. In this way they

become agents of change within the realm of a group and within the realm of their own

lives. This is also influenced by the presence of the audience, to whom all of the

participants, on or offstage, are vulnerable. They receive immediate feedback from

different audiences that make each performance a journey of its own, another learning

experience, and a bonding experience between the other participants who also offer

immediate feedback through the potency of the interaction that goes on while the

curtains are drawn open like a pair of arms, seeking embrace, approval, applause.

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These uniquely human modes of communication were frequently cited by the

interviewees and below are included a sample of their comments addressing these

communicative achievements through the topics of self development, creativity, and

community.

i) Self Development

"I think that's true that the emotion is a very good word there, because it's not just the

audience you're eliciting it from it's the people who are involved in theatre, I think are

more emotional, they may not be more emotional but they're not afraid to show their

emotions in the same way that other folk are" (Morna Wales Appendix 3 on Creativity).

"I guess it's like people that do down-ski racing and you know I'm not a downhill skier so

I have to get my thrills somehow" (Karina Rammell in Appendix 2 on Self Development).

"And I saw these people blossom, which is absolutely what my interest is, when I work

with students and actors, is to see them come alive, and I watched confidence being

built and self-awareness happening as they walked through territory that they had never

walked through before, they realized things that they never thought they could do, and

they realized that people were interested in what they had to say. And they realized

that they could do something. Like as simple as that: that they actually could make

something happen and were not useless" (Sonia Norris Appendix 4 on Community).

"That helped build my confidence. I'm bored to tears at work, but I have more

confidence in myself since I've joined here" (Wilson West in Appendix 2 on Self

Development).

"And I've always found that escaping into another persona, donning, you know, another

character, helped me cope with a lot of day-to-day stresses in my life" (Carol Miles in

Appendix 2 on Self Development).

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"And I think also, I think this can be learned in a lot of different ways but I think that you

start to learn how to have a voice in a sense, which is important anywhere. That's why

even with Paprika like maybe 95% of the kids that do it probably won't go into the arts,

it's still so important. It doesn't matter. It's not really about training it's more about them

as people" (from Julia Lederer's interview in Appendix 3 on Creativity).

"I think there are a lot of people, and I have watched this, that people don't realize what

is in them until someone asks them and says, 'will you try to do this?' and then they

discover that they can do it, and then they blossom" (David Skene-Melvin in Appendix 2

on Self Development).

"But even doing something like that, it's a therapeutic exercise, even if that script cuts

very close to the bone it's teaching you something and it's getting you in touch with

emotions that you otherwise might not feel" (Rob Prince in Appendix 2 on Self

Development).

ii) Creativity

"Sometimes I go home, like I did improv about a month or so ago and the only sort of

serious part of that was with somebody I've never done anything with and I got so

wrapped up in this, I was a recovering drug addict supposedly, and my heart was just

going like this (motions a throbbing motion on her chest), and I love that. And people

bought into that whole scenario, it was just one of those things, you know. We created"

(Carol Miles in Appendix 3 on Creativity).

"You open yourself up. I think it's also the fact that there is an awful lot of creativity

latent in people. I think when you're on stage it fulfills something in your psyche, your

creative psyche" (John Rammell Appendix 3 on Creativity).

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On his late wife: "she was not extraverted, she wasn't an exhibitionist, but she wanted to

be a participant. And the technical side, in particular running the light board, where it

was a question of her ability, it proved her ability, and that really made her feel good. It

showed that she was extremely useful" (David Skene-Melvin Appendix 3 on Creativity).

"It is to make people be affected by what you're saying and what you're doing. This is

hugely important. Because one of the basic things of creativity is that you're trying to

impose what you feel about a certain situation on other people through their emotions.

Not tell them but through their emotions" (John Rammell Appendix 3 on Creativity).

iii) Community

"The thing about theatre, unlike many other art forms is you can't practice it on your

own. You have to become part of a group" (John Goddard Appendix 4 on Community).

"Together we can produce something of value, as opposed to beating the other guys at

producing something of value" (John Goddard Appendix 3 on Creativity).

"And I think also because it's a struggle, it's like an army troop, you struggle and you

fight and you come out of it and you make it, I think that makes you closer to somebody

than somebody you just sit down and have a cup of coffee with. Because you've fought,

you've gone through that battle, and I think that strengthens--not always--there's a few

people I've come out and said 'I don't ever want to see that person as long as I live"

(Karina Rammell Appendix 4 on Community).

"Every single night a larger community is created by the audience coming together with

the company of actors because by the time you get to putting that show on, the strength

of the ensemble that is possible if they're actually working well together has a power

that emanates off of them, is what I believe." (Sonia Norris in Appendix 4 on

Community).

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The Power of Amateur Theatre through Creativity and Love

Irving Singer analyses creativity in its correlation to the act of love in his Appraisal and

Bestowal. In this he explains how "love creates its own community" (Stewart 222),

whereby it "may be best approached as a subspecies of the imagination. Not only does

the lover speak in poetic metaphors, but also behaves like any artist [...] What matters is

his way of seeing as a function of the imagination" (Stewart 223). I bring up this

comparison not simply because performing and acting employs one's imagination, but

because the creativity that emerges in amateur theatre is also an act of love. The lover's

imagination creates the beloved out of the object of love, the spectator the character out

of an actor, and the amateur a comrade out of a colleague.

Singer compares the creative act of love to the creativity inherent in the enjoyment of

and engagement with theatre. Here he explains how a fictional character's death (like

Hamlet's) can move us even more than that of someone we may know:

What happens, I think, is that you respond as if the actor were really Hamlet

and as if Hamlet really existed. The "as if" signifies that although you know

the action is only acting and Hamlet only fictitious, your imaginative

involvement causes you to express feelings appropriate to real people. at no

point are you deluded. The "illusion" of theatre is not an illusion at all. It is

an act of the imagination (224).

The difference is acceptance of reality in love - whereas theatre forces one to tune

reality out (226). In amateur theatre the driving force is about self-discovery and

experimentation, about discovering talents to give forth and the reaction or response or

applause always comes as an unexpected surprise, hence the perpetual delight and

endless supportive hugging that takes place in dressing rooms and back stage. We

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react to our co-stars and collaborators "as if" they were ourselves, or an extension

thereof.

The emotional development that arises in amateur theatre is the most apparent

difference between it and professional theatre. An act of love and passion is ignited by

the stage. The act of love forges unique bonds between collaborators as well as

transfigures the hidden self into an expressive artist. Sonia Norris was probably the

most articulate interview subject in illustrating this love-based act as it derives from

amateur theatre:

Holy crap the power of theatre is phenomenal. The power of passion

which is what theatre is to me (...) so the power of my passion to

activate their passion, and then their passion mixed with my passion to

then create this passionate event that then had people laughing and

crying in the audience activating their passion. And through it all when

you activate passion you create connection. You create engagement.

And again: a hunger to be part of an event to be part of a group to

cause linkage between human beings. I think that there must be

something very basic and primal about the desire to... you know, you

don't create a baby without a whole bunch of cells and whatnots linking

up, merging. I think there's just a really great strong need for it; and

they just came alive. (from Sonia Norris's interview in the section

"Creativity").

This creative transfiguration can occur when someone steps onto the stage with the aid

of only their friends or those to whom they have through collaboration entrusted the

success of their performance. In the amateur world, the standing ovation or prolonged

applause are not commonplace or expected as they might be to a professional, and so

when the audience laughs or listens silently or claps, the amateur is rewarded deeply in

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ways she never quite expected. The secure indifference of the professional that “of

course the show was great” is nowhere to be found. In this way, the work of the

amateur is like the creativity of love, the real opportunity to give, take risk in order to do

so, and be part of a community of like minded souls who know that hugs carry more

weight than criticism and they always have.

Unlike in the life of the „real‟ individual, the performing individual has no reason to feel

insecure because he is co-operating side-by-side on a team. No one is really imposing

his or her ideas or motives on anyone else as all are involved in the same collaborative

effort. In the workplace there are bosses and competitive coworkers. On the amateur

stage, one's own success becomes the success of everyone. The more at ease the

team or performing cast is, the more at ease each performer will be in the face of the

great risk that is posed by being placed in the line of fire, in front of an audience. This

vulnerability, for example, this risk of possibly of losing a line, or of someone else

missing a cue, gives the amateur performer an adrenalin rush. The downhill skier or

snowboarder feeds on his anxieties about hurdles, hills, and falling; the amateur

experiences risk taking by walking out on stage, which act forces him to focus and

channel all of his nervous energy into the one goal: the delivery of the show. Add to

that the fact that the amateurs are often untrained or have no prior experience, and the

challenge becomes greater, and perhaps the ultimate rush more potent.

This community of performers who are risking their very selves on the stage

necessitates supportiveness and love. The community that fosters the growth and the

confidence necessary to boldly put oneself in the position of public scrutiny makes the

creative act of amateur theatre unlike any other. The participants do not expect to be

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judged and thus know not to judge each other. This is how the open terrain of fearless

experimentation can occur. This is how the greatest possible educational experience

can be extracted and why it is so beneficial to the very young or inexperienced artist.

Many such persons, young and old, relentlessly monitored or controlled by their elders

and teachers, or by their bosses, shareholders, or by their co-workers or families, step

into a new world of creative freedom, when they set down their books and briefcases,

and pick up their first cardboard sword.

Brook concludes that theatre is the "if" in life actually played out. It is amateur theatre

that brings us closer to fully realizing that, as he states: "To play needs much work. But

when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more" (Brook 141). Sonia

Norris's discussion illustrates exactly this notion, as she explains "An altered possibility

of life I think is what theatre has to offer, and a magic that has to do with the immediacy,

of another human being in front of you in that moment looking you in the eye in the

audience" (Sonia Norris in Creativity). In amateur theatre that person looking you in the

eye is standing on the stage with you, and emerging inside of your very soul.

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Works Cited

Barba, Eugenio. Beyond the Floating Islands. New York: PAJ Publications, 1986.

Brook, Peter. Empty Space : A Book about the Theatre; Deadly, Holy, Rough,

Immediate. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1995.

Johnston, Denis W. Diverting the Mainstream: Bill Glassco and Tarragon Theatre.

Toronto: Denis w. Johnston, 1988

McBurney, Margaret. The Great Adventure: 100 Years at the Arts & Letters Club.

[Toronto: Arts & Letters Club of Toronto], 2007. Print.

Rendle, Adrian. Everyman and His Theatre. London, England: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons

Ltd., 1968.

Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies: An introduction. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Scruton, Roger. Modern Culture. 3rd ed. New York: Continuum, 2007. Print.

Stewart, Robert Michael. "Appraisal and Bestowal." Philosophical Perspectives on Sex

and Love. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. 217-26. Print.

Tarragon Theatre. "Mission." Tarragon Theatre. Web. 29 Aug. 2009.

<http://tarragontheatre.com/about/mission.php>.

Tarragon Theatre. "Support Tarragon." Tarragon Theatre. Web. 29 Aug. 2009.

<http://tarragontheatre.com/support >.

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Appendix 1 - Interview Questions

Untitled Jenna Rocca Project: Amateur Theatre

1. What is your profession?

How do you currently make your living?

2. How long have you been involved in the performing arts, and how did your

involvement come about?

3. Do you consider yourself an "amateur?"

4. What are the advantages of working in an amateur environment?

5. What are the disadvantages of working in an amateur environment?

Has your "theatrical" career ever put you at a fiscal defecit?

6. In what ways has being involved in amateur theatre changed or improved your life

on a more sublime level?

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Appendix 2 - Interview Transcripts on "Self Development"

David Skene-Melvin

Part of it is knowing that you are being a participant. That you are actually doing

something out of which you are creating enjoyment. There's the collaboration and the

social part and you know you make friends, you have parties and this sort of thing.

There is a sense that you're achieving something. I think that's really why I've done it

particularly when I was doing the stage managing. You are the one who's in control of

the show, when it's on. You know, you watch the audience, and you know that this is so

great, that you are, that you have actually done something, and people have come and

paid money to see what you've done. And also there is for yourself, unless you are

someone who does a lot of reading of drama. You, because you are involved in the

production of these plays, you are exposed to plays that you normally would never

attend or read. They're not your kind of reading pleasure. So you are exposed to these

things, you are entertained yourself. You learn a lot about human nature, by what is

being presented on the stage and also by working with people who are actors and stage

crew, particularly in an amateur production, because you don't have the authority that

you would have in a company, so you have to make a lot more compromises, and have

to be more amenable to people's quirks and oddities, and things like this. Particularly

people who come up for the second act, have cut because they've been drinking in the

intermission. There was one performer in the Hamilton group who did that.

Culturally it has improved me in two ways. One is culturally; it has exposed me to a lot

of fine writing and fine drama that I normally would not have encountered on my own.

and the other: it has given me the insight into myself of how to operate in a social group,

where you have to be communitarian. Where it is a collective, rather than, as I've

always done in my life as an executive, being an administrator, just passing the orders

down and you have the authority behind you. So in two ways it expanded me.

It taught me how to be operative within a collective over which there was no authority.

As opposed to managing in an organizational structure.

I think there are a lot of people, and I have watched this, that people don't realize what

is in them until someone asks them and says, 'will you try to do this?' and then they

discover that they can do it, and then they blossom.

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Dora Rust-D'Eye

In the amateur: There isn't quite as much at stake we were putting on Operas that had

million dollar budgets. But the principles are the same: you want everyone to have

costume, you want everybody to be happy in their costume, you want everybody to look

good on stage, it's just the stress level is quite different. But I think it requires the same

energy from the performer the same willingness to be judged, the same willingness by

the audience to be taken away.

Jane Carnwath

Because it's amateur we can do shows that for instance have big casts and if they were

professional we'd have to pay them and it would be just prohibitive so a lot of it is just

really interesting theatre. There's something about working with people who do it just

for the love of it (that's both the good news and the bad news) but it is, in fact, really

very exciting to do. And I've had a chance, through the Alumnae to do everything:

lighting, run sound, build sets, I mean we do everything. But mainly I've been able to

direct pieces that I might never otherwise have had a chance to do because of the

setting, because it's been an amateur setting. So I feel quite blessed to have been able

to do that.

In terms of the amateur theatre as opposed to professional, because I've done both, I

have a huge gratitude because as I say I've been allowed to do things that I would

never have been able to do in the professional theatre. For various reasons: too risky,

too expense, too 'out-there,' in the amateur theatre. And so it's been a huge influence,

and a huge training ground for me and I think for a lot of other people. And it's a lot of

fun and hey, you don't go in it for the bucks. So you better be having fun. And

sometimes it doesn't necessarily look like it. But when you look back on it: you do keep

coming back, and do it again.

John Goddard

Certainly there are financial expenses that you have being involved in it, I'm not sure

that's it's more than any other hobby. If you play hockey then you have to buy skates.

There is of course the time commitment. One of the problems of this as a hobby is that

it tends to be very concentrated. So for example you may have a hobby that once a

week or once a month you go and you join your friends and you do 'X: whatever,' the

theatrical event tends to be concentrated and over a condensed period of time, so over

a period of two or three months, there's a heavy commitment of time and energy and

then it's over and I think it's that heavy commitment that adds to the camaraderie we

were talking about before and the bond. It's because it's not that you're seeing these

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people one day a week or every two weeks, you're seeing them three, four times a

week, and then towards the end, every single day for a period of one or two weeks or

whatever. So there's a much greater sense of community because of the time you're

spending in a compressed period. Probably over the course of a year I don't spend any

more time on my hobby than does a bowler, but because my time is condensed into

three months whereas his hobby is spread out over a whole year.

I don't think there's any question of [the fact that one's experience as a performer can

affect one's day-to-day-life]. I think that one thing a theatrical background does is, it

certainly makes you more confident; getting up and standing in front of people and

talking. It certainly makes you more confident in particularly speaking in front of

strangers, because it's something that you've had practice at. So I think people who are

involved in the performing arts, and particularly theatre, I think, tend to be more

comfortable in that kind of situation. And to many people in business or whatever, that's

a very positive thing. I mean my job is to represent my organization to our members, to

potential members, and to the outside world and to the media, and so obviously part of

my job is to speak publicly in front of any number of people, and to do so comfortably.

So that's a skill I have acquired through my practice of theatre.

I am very much of the opinion that the theatrical experience, the personal experience of

it, is a continuum from the amateur to the professional. And I think we alluded to the

fact before, that the line is blurred between one and the other. And I think that the

amateur theatre exists in order to satisfy the creative impulse and some people follow

that more and more and more until it becomes their profession, and some people it is

just an impulse that their soul needs in order to carry on at being an accountant during

the day. I think the same thing is true of the audience. I think that people very much--I

would guess that most people's initial experience with theatre is with amateur, and I

think people stumble on an experience with it and say, 'I want more of this,' and then go

from the amateur to the professional. I don't think that there are many people that start

out by going to the Stratford Shakespearian Festival to see some theatre, I think that

they start with a local high school, and I think they catch the bug and they say, 'I'd like

more of this.' And sometimes they say, 'and I'd like it better.' But sometimes they say,

'whatever.' I think that the amateur feeds the rest of the spectrum, whether it remains

amateur or whether it crosses over to professional. The other thing you'd have to

remember too which is very evident in my position is that for a good three-quarters of

this province, when we talk about theatre we're talking about the amateur theatre.

Professional theatre is very highly concentrated in Toronto, Stratford, Shaw, Ottawa and

then a couple of other cities have professional theatres, but to the bulk of this province,

when people talk about theatre they're talking about amateur theatre and that's how the

art form is practiced and nurtured, and maintained, is through the amateurs.

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Julia Lederer

I sort of came into Paprika having no idea that I would end up running it for a year, but

also I hadn't really thought too much about working with youth in theatre just because I

had basically just graduated from my undergrad, and I really realized how important it is,

like it's so important, even just particularly as a form of expression because when I see

sixteen year olds writing plays about emotions that they have, like, what a healthy way

to express yourself and to be able to talk openly and connect with your peers and other

people about the way you're feeling in a way that is through art and isn't as scary as just

saying exactly what those feelings are and sometimes you can't even articulate them.

And so I think that primarily is so important. And just to have them meet people outside

of their schools and outside of their homes, that they can connect with and tell them that

they have good ideas. Like that's so important, especially that they have good ideas,

and to have them see a project through is so important and also have people that they

really can connect with and talk to and work on something with that's important to them.

I feel like that can be so lost, especially with that age. And within any age, but

particularly during adolescence and early twenties. And I love that outside of school

context a thirteen year old can connect with a twenty year old and it's fine because

they're working together on something. I think that's so great.

I feel like since I've gotten involved in theatre, and as a writer too you become much

more self-aware, but I was like, 'oh, but I'm also getting older,' but then when I sit in a

room with these women that I'm script co-ordinating for who are all like, a bit younger

than my parents, but they're so self-aware when they talk to each other, when they talk

about themselves, and it's also just my experience, but it's so, I feel like they work within

this way where you have to access your emotions whether you're just acting and

accessing them within another role, or whether you're writing, or whether you're just

trying to work together and connect with someone. I think you have to connect on an

emotional level to work in theatre and it's really difficult I think in a lot of ways but it's

also, it becomes so intermingled with your outside life. And I think that is definitely a

difference, just in terms of being able to express an opinion about something, but also

know when not to express it. In terms of communication I think the more you work with

people, I think you develop a certain language between the two people, and you get to

know people really well. Like I had an experience where I did a play that I wrote twice

and I did it once in May with a friend that I sort of just met, and then I did it six months

later and we' d become quite close in that time and it was so different, and like it wasn't

any conscious choice that we were making but there's definitely a certain level of

comfort that develops which is really fun because you trust the person and so you don't

always have to do the same thing, you know, it can change a bit and you'll be okay.

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I think it's kind of made me open to different lifestyles and choices that you can make

that aren't in my family structure just in that no one in my family is in the arts. Like there

are so many different ways that you can exist. And especially in the arts, you think of

the financial situation as well, and because of the nature of the job where it's constantly

changing, people are very creative with the ways that they structure their lives, in a way

that works, especially with family or without, it doesn't really matter, and that's been

really interesting. To see, especially working with people who are older than me, to see

the choices they've made and how that's worked and it's okay. And my prior

experience, like I knew one structure, as I think most people do when they grow up,

because you grow up within the family you grow up in and that's the structure that you

learn. So that's been, like, just outside of the theatrical context, just seeing different sort

of ways of life, has been interesting. And I think also, I think this can be learned in a lot

of different ways but I think that you start to learn how to have a voice in a sense, which

is important anywhere. That's why even with Paprika like maybe 95% of the kids that

do it probably won't go into the arts, it's still so important. It doesn't matter. It's not

really about training it's more about them as people.

You figure out how to make things work. Like someone hands you something to do or

seek out something that you've never done before; because the only way to learn is

through doing and so a lot of times you're going to do things that you've never done

before and so, but there's no practice really. And that's great but it's terrifying, but then

when you do something. Like with Paprika I don't think that I ever would have thought

that I could do something like that, like run a festival like that. But someone puts their

faith in you or you put your faith in yourself and you just do it. And I don't know how

else you would learn that. That you have to figure it out, and I think that's really great.

In terms of skills as a leader and just as a person, and figuring out what you want to do

and accomplishing it.

I think at a certain point you have to start taking yourself seriously and I mean we all

need to be paid, and we're all very understanding in the arts, I mean, we know that no

one's making any money, and I think if you love it and you want to help with work that

you believe in but you also have to be realistic and I think at some point start

considering yourself a professional. And that's really fine line, I think I'm really at the

point where I'm still figuring that out. And also, it's funny, like I just had an experience

with my old company where in a workshop of my play we had a student come in a script

co-ordinate which is an admin sort of like, organizational job. And I've done it a bunch

of times actually here and it's not a paid role usually and we weren't going to pay her.

But then we kind of thought about it and realized that we don't want to foster that, and

even just an honorarium means that your work is important, and so we did. And the

times that I have been paid like as a surprise for doing that work, as the money is so

helpful and it's so appreciated it's just nice to feel validated and important, and

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necessary. One thing that I really found is when you're the only person in the room not

being paid and you're obviously someone who has less experience, you can feel you

could just not be there and it wouldn't matter, and that's really not the case and so it's

nice. And that's really important in your own psyche like if you're then going to go and

take charge of your own project, that can be a really difficult jump. So I think there has

to be a point where you start to take yourself seriously. And I mean eventually make

that transition into getting paid at least some of the time.

Theatre school is so dependent on your peers because you're work is so integrated with

the people in your class so I was really lucky at Dal because there were a lot of people

who had the impetus to do stuff outside of the classroom. So I did a lot of stuff there,

but the real learning of how to start working professionally, definitely started after that.

So the great thing is that most people are so open to letting you into their process.

Because it's so hard to work your way up the ladder of theatre, people who are five, ten

years ahead of me whose processes I'm really interested in and who I have a lot to

learn from are so thankful of anyone who will do something for free that they'll let you--

you know, that they'll really engage with you. So I've learned a lot from those very sort

of relationships and jobs that I've taken on.

I've only really produced one show, it was at Summerworks, and we were lucky

fundraising and we did fine, but I've done things where we're never at a huge risk and

so we usually break even. If we lose money, between the five of us it's like forty dollars.

Because we're not really spending much to begin with. But I think the deficit comes in if,

for example I had this amazing opportunity to script co-ordinate for the sequel to the

Attic, the Pearls, and the Three Fine Girls, so it was Jennifer Brewin, Leah Cherniak,

Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alisa Palmer and Martha Ross, so to me they're like, I call them

the Beatles of Canadian theatre, like they're so prominent and interesting and wonderful

and I really wanted to do it and I did but it's--and they actually did pay me an honorarium

in the end which was amazing but it's a lot of time, and so it's just not being able to work

outside of that. And I think that's the main thing. Or when you're an assistant director

and you're not getting paid, I think as an assistant director you wanna be getting paid

and you wanna sort of create a niche for yourself but you're there and those are hours

that you're not getting paid.

At some point you have to be more selective, because I think that in the arts, initially it's

like you'll take anything, well, within reason, that you see as an opportunity to meet

people and to learn but then it gets to some point, especially if you want to be perceived

in a certain way and develop certain skills you need to narrow it down. And also there's

only twenty-four hours in a day so you need to start to be more selective.

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Lorna Kelly and Bill Whiteacre

Lorna - I do think that by making yourself a public figure, by getting up there, people

assume they can talk to you at any time.

Bill - Not at all, we are judged very severely. There isn't any year where everything that

I have submitted has been accepted. Now that has to do with not wanting one writer to

have too much, unless that writer is also a member of the theatre committee.

Lorna - However, I do believe that they get twice as much work submitted than they can

use. So they have to go through and even if they initially say, 'well maybe we'll think

about doing that one,' they have to go through and they time out everything when they

do a reading, early on in the process, and they say, 'the show's only going to be ninety

minutes long, we've got to eliminate this one we've got to eliminate that one.' And then

you get things that are eliminated because of who can appear in it or the sets or things

like that so, yes I think we get a lot of good work from the writers, but it comes down to

the fact that they can't possibly do it all.

Lorna - There's a sense that in many cases that we suffer fools gladly. That we are

prepared to accept somebody because you think, 'oh well they're a nice guy and they

do this,' so you accept them. Whereas if this was a professional or semi-professional

show where you were looking for perfection the director of any part of it would have to

eliminate people and as Bill said that's not the norm in the club. And I think that they

used to. And I have been in one thing here where there was auditions, and it was really

well done and it was well directed. It was really good.

Marianne Fedunkiw

There's no great divide, people don't go, 'oh, well, I'm going to see an amateur

performance so I'm going to scale back my expectations and you know, if they forget a

line or two it's okay.' Audiences don't do that so performers can't afford to scale back in

the preparation or in the passion that they bring.

Mike Spence

It certainly has reinforced some of the management training I got at Ontario Hydro. In

terms of motivating people and getting to a common goal, I think it maybe has improved

my listening skills. And to some extent you become a little more sensitized to people's

emotions and feelings and behaviours. And you can also be on the receiving end of a

lot of accolades and a lot of support for doing a good job.

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Morna Wales with Carol Miles

Carol - I certainly find that in my day-to-day job, I work in a small operating room at

one of the big teaching hospitals here, I use humour, and actions as a way of elating

people's fears and so on, I think most of us take something from this and use it in our

day-to-day lives. Whether it's to maintain one's sanity or it's to make people feel

comfortable, in any given situation I don't know. I'm a total exhibitionist, I love getting up

there. And my job involves a lot of drama, it does, I mean we do have occasions where

there's a lot of intense emotions going on. Not specifically now, but certainly in the past.

And I've always found that escaping into another persona, donning, you know, another

character, helped me cope with a lot of day-to-day stresses in my life.

Morna - It's a confidence builder, I was always extremely shy, and the thing is that

taking drama classes and being onstage, and even in my work because I had to give

presentations all the time, and I'm telling you, theatre really helped with that, you know I

didn't worry about it after a while, after being onstage a few times, it's not so difficult. So

I think it's a two-way thing: you bring things to your other life from the theatre and you

bring things from your life, for instance in my case project management, which I'm able

to bring to for instance, organizing the Spring Revue here. It's a project, it has a

beginning and an end, it has a drop-dead date which most projects don't. You have

limited resources, it's all the things that in a business or a construction project you'd be

dealing with and I can bring those skills that I learned in the bank to theatre and I

certainly took a lot of things into my work life as well

Rob Prince, John Rammell, and Karina Rammell in Conversation

Rob - I mean I think I had, I'm not exaggerating here, I think I had six lines in the whole

play. It was good fun and it was very, very challenging for the leads, and I saw how

hard they worked on this, how a play was blocked, how scenes had to be worked and

re-worked and tweaked. I didn't have to be there all the time because my part was very

scene limited but I wanted to be there, just to learn. Because I just found the whole

thing fascinating.

Then after that there was the Spring Revue and when the call came for that I thought,

well, yeah, this should be fun, so I came out for that. An entirely different kind of thing.

I had no idea that I could sing at all, and discovered that yes apparently I can hold a

tune.

It's a real adrenaline rush, and I guess I'd forgotten what that was like since it had been

so long since I'd been on the stage before, but there's a real performer's high. And I

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also found from watching my early performances, very early on I got to be in a Tom

Stoppard play here that Herb Whitaker did with John Neville in the lead role, and

several students from Ryerson, so it was sort of a split cast, some ALC people and John

Neville was teaching a class at Ryerson back then and he brought his students in to

play the younger roles. But to watch John Neville work up close was amazing. Lots of

actors do this but he did it particularly, he has another gear for the performance, you

see him do it in dress rehearsal and you thought, well that was pretty good but opening

night he just kicks it up another two notches and it's just incredible to watch, it was

amazing.

Most of the time here we're playing it for laughs, and that doesn't necessarily make it

any easier. In some cases we've done serious drama, but I think there's something

about the job of trying to craft a character whether that's a character who appears

onstage for thirty seconds, and tells a joke and makes people laugh, or whether that's a

character, I was in a play here a couple of years ago, and my character was a son

whose mother was starting to show signs of Alzheimer's and whose own life is a mess

and it's a character who totally breaks down onstage. But even doing something like

that, it's a therapeutic exercise, even if that script cuts very close to the bone it's

teaching you something and it's getting you in touch with emotions that you otherwise

might not feel. And I guess that was sort of when I realized that I'd come if not full circle

at least I'd come a long way on that path that I'd seen because I remember telling

someone else in the cast, 'cos we'd done our dress rehearsal, and I said, 'that felt pretty

good but I'm sure if we get a hundred people in the crowd tomorrow night that'll drive

me even further, the tears you see when he breaks down will be real tomorrow night

very likely,' and they were. Just having the crowd, having the people there, that extra

shot of adrenaline, I could get that much deeper into the character, deeper into the

script and if the house had been empty it would have been that much harder.

I thrive on the audience, I need the audience to some extent. I'll get nervous over the

material sometimes especially if it's one that I know I've been having trouble with a line

or two, somewhere. But having a hundred or a hundred and fifty people in the crowd, or

people I know in the crowd, doesn't seem to make a difference in terms of how nervous

I am. Adding people into the crowd doesn't seem to bother me.

Karina -They say you get bitten and I think if you try it once and it just feels so good and

so right, that you just want to do it again. And again. I guess it's like people that do

down-ski racing and you know I'm not a downhill skier so I have to get my thrills

somehow.

Rob - What you're doing, you're doing in front of an awful lot of people, I mean

everyone wants to be successful whether it's in business, but your boss who's one

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person may say 'hey, you're doing a great job there,' nobody else knows that except you

and your boss, but this way, you have maybe fifty to a hundred people, a lot of people

backstage and everything else, and you've also satisfied a creative-I can't emphasize

more the fact that creativity, the urge to be creative is hugely important.

(In regards to the political nature as a potential downside with a kind of upside) There

was a skit that I don't think was quite up to the standard that we had for the show that

year but it was short so they decided to put it in, because we think the writer can learn

something from this because he's not written for the show and he may not quite know

but he'll get to see what a director does with it, how a cast handles his lines and how the

audience reacts to it, and it was a blessing in that sense. But I don't think it ever worked

in the show that year, but it was a learning experience and the next year he wrote

another skit and I think it was probably the best thing in the show the following year.

You'll learn something not just about the lines and the mechanics of delivering the lines,

you'll learning something about the human condition from having the director open your

eyes to something you didn't see in a play that you've read a dozen times before.

John - And having to portray it on a stage, you know, if you're having to portray fear or

love or whatever it is, you know, as an actor, and of course you gain something from

this; no doubt about it.

Rob - On how it has changed him: I think that fifteen years ago I would have been much

less able to do things on the job that I do now. You have a body of confidence that you

can call on and say 'okay, this is the sort of thing I can do.' Beyond that I think that

John Rammell - You open yourself up. I think it's also the fact that there is an awful lot

of creativity latent in people. I think when you're on stage it fulfills something in your

psyche, your creative psyche.

Ruth Morawetz

Jenna I find it very interesting that you're here, stimulating us by asking these questions.

What does this say about the club that you're preparing a video for club Friday nights

and stimulating us to think of these answers which we don't usually think about. You

know, I appreciate your challenging us. And the input you give to us. It's great. It's not

every day that we're asked these questions.

Wilson West

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He implies that his reasons are incredibly complex, and then states: "well it is [complex]

to me." Getting him to explain this complexity was an incredibly elusive object, as

Wilson was not that open about it.

I had recently been separated , wasn't living with my kids and was feeling like a bag of

shit and useless and worthless. The club actually sort of saved me because I joined the

club right when that happened. By fluke itself, so this was really a good thing and

everybody's very forgiving. I've always said this is a very forgiving place for people in

the stage, basically. But what I've been able to do so far, it's been great.

I moved around a lot as a child, as a kid, I changed schools every two years. The way I

found to cope with it is to be friendly and outgoing and make friends. So that's what I

did, so I've learned how to [intensify and accelerate the social process] because moving

sucked. So I try and be not the life of the party, because I'm not good at that, but I like

when everyone is having a good time and chit-chatting, but relaxed and open, that's it.

And I found a lot of that here. That's why I call it forgiving but really nice unassuming

people.

I needed it I guess because of what had happened two or three years before. But then

when you find it with these others, like Carol and Morna, everybody: "yeah, no, it's

great, keep doing it," you know, encouraging. I need that. I need to feel like what I was

doing was good and okay.

My kids come to every performance and they love it. They come and sit in the balcony,

mom brings them, and she told me once afterwards that she thought it was really great

that I was doing this and the kids could come and be involved and see it. When we did

Sunshine Town, the very first one, I was so insecure and embarrassed and unsure of

what I was doing, I told mom and the kids that I was working backstage pulling the

curtains and doing the lights and things. So they didn't know until curtain opened and I

was standing there acting and singing. Plus on the flip side that whole mass of

insecurity, that whole knot of fear. But I did it and it worked somehow. I was so glad.

That's what I've done before, things that I've done in my life. I'm so insecure about

things, insecure about myself, part of that was from moving around so much, 'cos I got

sick of meeting new--and I just sort of went into myself or you try and come out by being

jokey and make people like you, and if they don't like you then you just go back into

your little ball, that I would do things and I thought 'if I don't do it then I'll hate myself

more, if I don't do it.' Like I learned to scuba dive so I could do under-water archaeology.

But I did it, so I could do that, and other things. I finally went back and got my Ph.D.,

fifteen years after I got my Masters because I had to go work. I didn't think I could do it.

But at some point I finally realized I could do it so I went ahead and It thought if I don't

do I'll regret it. So I went ahead and I did it. It was awful, it was torture, it was hell.

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Coming here and doing this has raised my confidence back up, and getting that

permanent job has too so it's all sort of been back on rise, which is a good thing.

Because getting up there and exposing yourself like that, and then trying to watch

yourself doing it. I mean that's about as naked as you can get. I'm sure people have

said this before. I still can't believe that I did it. And I never had sung or danced before,

and I got up there and started singing and dancing. And they said it was okay. So I just

went, 'okay.' I still couldn't watch it to this day, because my voice isn't that good but it

was okay. And people seem to like it, and they told me it was good, and 'way to go.' So

I needed that. That helped build my confidence. I'm bored to tears at work, but I have

more confidence in myself since I've joined here.

Has had previous experience with public speaking, though: Conferences, giving talks.

Papers, about my field. I've been doing that for years.

In my little experience, the merits of it... I don't know. It's a great place to practice, in the

sense of learn how to do it. I don't know any amateur theatre outside of here. And I

haven't been to many plays. I think the older ones enjoy it, the younger ones need the

affirmation. 'You did a good job and thanks for entertaining me for an hour and a half.'

On John Rammell: He's great, God, what a great guy. He's made me feel so

comfortable here. He's amazing. He has the greatest voice. And to see him so

comfortable and all that. I'd like to be that comfortable.

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Appendix 3 - Interview Transcripts on "Creativity"

David Skene-Melvin

On being different from people who are not in theatre: Yeah, you are different in the

wiring of your mind. Because you are in theatre. You're doing it because it's something

you like to do and you enjoy doing it. There are other people who do other things and

they wouldn't dream of doing it because it would just bore them out of their mind. So yes

you are different because: I would never play golf. I think that's the most boring game in

the world. So that's what I mean about wiring of the mind. You have different tastes in

what interests you and that's where the difference is.

There's an empowerment for you. My late wife was the only person other than Michael

Spence who knew how to run the light board, and he trained her to do it. I know how

she felt because this production was not going to work if she didn't get the cues. So she

is very much in control, and for her, she did not want to go out and sing, she was not

extraverted, she wasn't an exhibitionist, but she wanted to be a participant. And the

technical side, in particular running the light board, where it was a question of her ability,

it proved her ability, and that really made her feel good. It showed that she was

extremely useful. And that's why I liked doing what I was doing because I was actually

manufacturing things with the stage construction and running the play, you know, it's

really nice to be a manger if you have the talent. I do not think you can teach

management I think it is something within someone, being able to handle people and do

leadership.

If they are doing drama, which requires that you have people with a very high degree of

sensitivity to be able to understand what the writer has put into the composition, that

brings things out of them, and that can be very self-satisfying for them. On the part of

the audience, you are either going to make them very happy, in that they are going to

be very cheered up by the content, and they're going to feel good when they leave the

theatre, or they are going to have a catharsis: they are going to be deeply moved by

what has been presented to them. And that I think is very useful, socially as a way to

get through to a group of individuals collected in an audience as to what humanity is.

What it is to be human. For them to see actual people, not just up on the screen, but

actually moving about, human beings, being other human beings, and bringing out

emotions. And you feel them in the audience if it's a really good production, and you

can come out of the audience and you can come out very unhappy, very moved, very

thought-provoked. So I have a great respect for live theatre, and I think it's very useful

and I'll always support it. And a lot of people get a lot of joy out of actually being a

participant in it because you really have two kinds of people: there are people who want

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to be involved in something, and you have a lot of members in any group or

organization who don't want to be involved at all, you can't get them to join the

executive, you can't get them to do anything, they just are content to sit back and let

somebody else do it for them. So it gives an opportunity for the participants to do

something, and if you don't have a musical ability or you're not a great writer or anything

but yeah you can use your hands and you know how to hold a hammer so you work in

stage crew. And maybe you do have a talent in making clothes, or you have a talent in

actually putting on makeup or you're very good at putting things together and doing

carpentry. So all of these things, you know, they all flow together, to produce what you

are presenting to the audience, and you're asking the audience to pay, and so you've

got to give value for their money.

Dora Rust-D'Eye

What I'm always struck by is the way people are so willing to expose themselves, in the

best possible way. People are really willing here at the club to kind of volunteer to sing

and dance sing and dance. Untrained people singing their hearts out onstage is

really...! But I think it's just a sense of fun, and you know a willingness to put yourself

out for the performance.

I'm very concerned about how we express ourselves, how we share our experience,

and I think theatre can be very strong. And I don't think we do enough of it.

I certainly feel that as a director I am forced to look at how people express the internal

experience externally, because that's what we do. As a director that's how I tend to work

so it means I'm having to look at people's subtext, people's unconscious responses to

things, how they express it physically, verbally, non-verbally. But to generalize about

the human condition from that? I'm not sure.

Stretching yourself and putting yourself in front of people that's a little bit more--it takes

more out of you. You're opening yourself up to criticism or judgement. And that's the

chance you take as a performer. And to a certain extent it's the same way with the

people who work backstage. If they're sitting there watching a production they've got

lots of time to think "oh, that dress really doesn't suit her, or you know it doesn't look

good." So you're putting yourself out there in a way that may not meet other people's

comfort level.

It's a cultural underpinning of society. Well think about historically before people had

television and radio and that kind of thing. You put on musicales, you put on

performances with your friends, you played charades. People don't do that all that

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much anymore so perhaps it's being supplanted a bit by the ease that we can see great

performances: now we can go to the [movie] theatre and watch the Met, but I think

there's that need there for expression, as an audience member to be enthralled,

enchanted, taken away.

Jane Carnwath

They say when you're dealing with an actor, no matter how old they are, you're probably

dealing with someone of the emotional age of about fourteen. And that's the strength

because there's that openness, and that vulnerability, and you have to respect that. But

it does mean, I think people give you permission to relate to them on that level, and it

means you have a certain responsibility to honour that to respect it, and it does allow

you, I think, a huge opportunity for insight into how people function. I tend not to

generalize about it, but I guess there is. I guess I have thoughts and conclusions about

how people deal with experience, because you're always going for truth. However

stylized or dealing with heightened language, it's still going for that kernel of something

that's true, and universal. But that's not top of mind, you're working moment-to-moment.

So that's something you have to step back and look at afterwards, and that's not

something I've done a great deal of. It is a by-product of what we do. It helps to have

some sort of insight. You have to find what each actor (although it works for everyone

in the show), what that person needs in order to give the best of what they've got. How

do you create a situation where they are free to do their very best, and do something

that's true and real and committed, but it is starting where they are. And that applies to

teaching as well. In terms of learning: I guess your interactions with people are pretty

much coloured by trying to see what's people's subtext and so in terms of big

revelations about the human condition: I'd have to think about that for a very long time.

It's very much in the moment.

There's nothing like it. It's different from film. You're on the high-wire. It's very

gratifying but also: I'm never satisfied. I tend to see the flaws and what could have been

better much more. And I take that away : "how could I do that better?" I think it's made

me more comfortable in situations where I'm dealing with groups of people. I don't

know: chicken and eggs. I suspect it's made me more willing to be real, rather than

putting on an act. And it is my own particular approach to theatre and exclusive to me

but you're constantly going for what's true. And what rings true. And if you put on an

act, as an actor or you 'put on an act.' It shows. So it's sort of second-nature. Perhaps

it makes one a little more self-conscious. I don't mean nervous, but conscious of self,

and how you are impacting on other people. I'm concerned about how they're receiving

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me. But I don't know if it has anything to do with theatre, it's just who I am. And I think

that's fairly common.

The sort of trajectory is that you start working on a show, you meet people, it becomes

very intense, as you know, but there's always that focus in the relationship, you have

this shared love, obsession, craziness, whatever it is, that is kind of the ground base of

anything that kind of happens in your relationship. With other relationships... I don't

think you can characterize other relationships because I think they all start from some

kind of shared: whether it's family or friendships, there's usually a common experience

but then it kind of morphs into something more disparate. It is in a way a language:

there's a vocabulary that you share. There is a kind of shared [something], and it's not

really top of mind, but you just know it's there. I think there's a kind of: we know it's

something that not everybody shares, and we ...'cos theatre people are sometimes a

world apart to other people. It's difficult and it's also inspiring, and it's: a lot of people

think we're nuts, and maybe we are, but we share that.

John Goddard

I do believe very much that to everything there is a season, and there are people whose

soul did not need that for many years and then at some point in time due to some sort of

whatever--arrangement of the stars all of a sudden they felt the need to express

themselves in this way. I think generally speaking that the people who are involved in

the performing arts often are involved in another art form as well or at least has artistic

sensitivities. You rarely see people whose other activities are in sports or all of a

sudden they have one creative outlet. Perhaps that other creative outlet satisfied them

over a period of time and then they reached a point in time where they need another

outlet. I think that there have been times in my life when I've been more and less

involved in it. Certainly when I became involved in the professional theatre my

involvement in the community theatre was reduced a lot, not that I was acting directly in

professional theatre; I was in the administration side of it. But I still was part of a

creative process that was satisfying that need so that I have not been nearly as

involved: I haven't directed a play for oh--10, 12 years. And while I slightly feel the urge

to get back at it it's not an overbearing sense of lack right now because I have other

activities that connect me with the art form. I think there are many people who can

satisfy their performing art need quite on the periphery and sometimes just within the

audience and of just going and seeing. And in certain points in our life that will satisfy

the need, and then at other times you have to be involved.

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I think ultimately, the art form, again... I can't compare it to another art form. But I think

that being a practicing artist, whether amateur or professional does create a greater

sensitivity to the world around you. I, in my more aggressive moments would say that I

think that the world would be a better place with more artists and less sportsmen,

particularly in the performing arts, particularly in the group creation there is a sense that

we are greater than the sum of our parts, that what we create is better than what we

would do on our own. I frankly, I do object to the over-emphasis on sports, particularly

team sports. I object to the fact that we subject children often to a situation which by its

very definition, you have a fifty per cent chance of being a loser, as opposed to being in

a band where everyone wins because we've created a piece of music together. I object

to subjecting children to a situation where try as hard as you might and giving it your all,

you're not good enough because you lost. And there are those would tell us that that

builds character and I don't think that that's the kind of character that we need to build.

So, yes I certainly believe in teaching children physical education for taking care of their

bodies and the exercise is healthy in prolonging life and in having a healthy body, but

I'm not a fan of team competitive sports because I don't believe in the lessons that it

teaches, and I think that art teaches us better lessons, I think it teaches us to look at the

world around us, and to think about it and evaluate it, and contemplate it and think

about what it is and what is good about it. I think in performing arts, in particular, or at

least in collaborative arts, it teaches that we can do more working together than we can

working on our own. That together we can produce something of value, as opposed to

beating the other guys at producing something of value. One might say that, John, it's

somewhat hypocritical that Theatre Ontario does have a Theatre Ontario festival and we

do give a prize for the best play and I would acknowledge that competition is a part of

our society and what we constantly try and do throughout that activity is stress the

educational aspect of it, so that when we have a competition, we have an adjudicator

who stands up and says, 'this is what was good. This is what needs more work. This

worked really well. You should develop this. Here's ways of doing it.' It is an

educational process which yes, I acknowledge, culminates with saying this one play

was better than the other three. But I do feel, in my heart, that the arts are better for us

then are the competitive athletic activity which I don't think is necessarily teaching

people proper lessons.

There are many people who like to play piano just because they like to play piano. It is

not like just sitting down and playing piano - there are many people who like to sit down

and play piano, and that is sufficient. That's not the case with a performer, you need the

audience to respond.

I think what we're talking about is what art is. I mean, art reflects life, so in that sense

we participating in the creation of an artistic work are reflecting life and we're trying to

shed some light on it. Even if it's a farce even if it's ludicrous we are shedding some

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light on the human existence. I think what might be dangerous is to say that a group of

actors is typical of society or of life, they are a peculiar breed, and I'm not sure that

that's a proper microcosm of normal society, you've got a bunch of gregarious outgoing

people in a room, it may be not typical, but I think what we're doing is very much an

attempt to shed light on the human existence. We do it in a way that speaks to us. I

would say theatre does it better because we're real people saying real words, talking

and moving like real people, trying to reflect on what happens to real people.

Personally I have a harder time going to a dance performance and saying that is

reflecting my existence. That may be because I'm not attuned to dance. But I think that

because theatre takes the actual objects that we see around us every day and throws a

spotlight on them, real people standing there saying real words, interacting like real

people do that we see on the street, I think it has a better chance of prodding people to

a reflection of what their life is. That's my take on it and my apologies to all the dancers

of the world.

I don't think it's any secret that people who are involved in the performing arts tend to be

a little more gregarious, they tend to be outgoing, they tend to be more social. And I

think that's part of the nature of what it is they do. Not only do they stand up in front of

an audience and present themselves to an audience and to the audience's approval or

criticism but also because they practice their art within a social setting within a group,

they tend to be people who are good at interacting or who are gregarious in that way.

One of the mainstays of any production company whether it's amateur or professional

are the stage carpenters and so on. And again, there are many other outlets if a man or

woman wants to do carpentry, but to want to do it in the theatrical setting there's usually

a certain gregariousness a certain sociability about the person that is part of their artistic

enjoyment.

I think generally speaking that the people who are involved in the performing arts often

are involved in another art form as well or at least has artistic sensitivities. You rarely

see people whose other activities are in sports or all of a sudden they have one creative

outlet. Perhaps that other creative outlet satisfied them over a period of time and then

they reached a point in time where they need another outlet. I think that there have

been times in my life when I've been more and less involved in it.

Julia Lederer

In terms of community theatre, and what I love about it is that everyone is just doing it

because they love it. And there are these very sophisticated set-ups and institutions

within a community, and everyone has a different job and they bring different

experiences. It's just really fun because of the sheer joy in doing it and it's really nice

sometimes to be reminded of that and that that still happens because you can get so

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caught up in trying to "make a smart career move" whatever that even means, right?

And impressing the right people and being sort of within a business mindset within

something that you used to because they loved it. And so it's really fun to go to

community theatre and remind yourself of that. And it's just a really neat way to bring

people together and have them work on the same project, but also brings joy to the

people that are watching it because they know people in it, and it's a lot of fun, it's great.

I sort of came into Paprika having no idea that I would end up running it for a year, but

also I hadn't really thought too much about working with youth in theatre just because I

had basically just graduated from my undergrad, and I really realized how important it is,

like it's so important, even just particularly as a form of expression because when I see

sixteen year olds writing plays about emotions that they have, like what a healthy way to

express yourself and to be able to talk openly and connect with your peers and other

people about the way you're feeling in a way that is through art and isn't as scary as just

saying exactly what those feelings are and sometimes you can't even articulate them.

And so I think that primarily is so important. And just to have them meet people outside

of their schools and outside of their homes, that they can connect with and tell them that

they have good ideas. Like that's so important, especially that they have good ideas,

and to have them see a project through is so important and also have people that they

really can connect with and talk to and work on something with that's important to them.

I feel like that can be so lost, especially with that age. And within any age, but

particularly during adolescence and early twenties. And I love that outside of school

context a thirteen year old can connect with a twenty year old and it's fine because

they're working together on something. I think that's so great.

I feel like since I've gotten involved in theatre, and as a writer too you become much

more self-aware, but I was like, 'oh, but I'm also getting older,' but then when I sit in a

room with these women that I'm script co-ordinating for who are all like, a bit younger

than my parents, but they're so self-aware when they talk to each other, when they talk

about themselves, and it's also just my experience, but it's so, I feel like they work within

this way where you have to access your emotions whether you're just acting and

accessing them within another role, or whether you're writing, or whether you're just

trying to work together and connect with someone. I think you have to connect on an

emotional level to work in theatre and it's really difficult I think in a lot of ways but it's

also, it becomes so intermingled with your outside life. And I think that is definitely a

difference, just in terms of being able to express an opinion about something, but also

know when not to express it. In terms of communication I think the more you work with

people, I think you develop a certain language between the two people, and you get to

know people really well. Like I had an experience where I did a play that I wrote twice

and I did it once in May with a friend that I sort of just met, and then I did it six months

later and we' d become quite close in that time and it was so different, and like it wasn't

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any conscious choice that we were making but there's definitely a certain level of

comfort that develops which is really fun because you trust the person and so you don't

always have to do the same thing, you know, it can change a bit and you'll be okay.

I think it's kind of made me open to different lifestyles and choices that you can make

that aren't in my family structure just in that no one in my family is in the arts. Like there

are so many different ways that you can exist. And especially in the arts, you think of

the financial situation as well, and because of the nature of the job where it's constantly

changing, people are very creative with the ways that they structure their lives, in a way

that works, especially with family or without, it doesn't really matter, and that's been

really interesting. To see, especially working with people who are older than me, to see

the choices they've made and how that's worked and it's okay. And my prior

experience, like I knew one structure, as I think most people do when they grow up,

because you grow up within the family you grow up in and that's the structure that you

learn. So that's been, like, just outside of the theatrical context, just seeing different sort

of ways of life, has been interesting. And I think also, I think this can be learned in a lot

of different ways but I think that you start to learn how to have a voice in a sense, which

is important anywhere. That's why even with Paprika like maybe 95% of the kids that

do it probably won't go into the arts, it's still so important. It doesn't matter. It's not

really about training it's more about them as people.

You figure out how to make things work. Like someone hands you something to do or

seek out something that you've never done before; because the only way to learn is

through doing and so a lot of times you're going to do things that you've never done

before and so, but there's no practice really. And that's great but it's terrifying, but then

when you do something. Like with Paprika I don't think that I ever would have thought

that I could do something like that, like run a festival like that. But someone puts their

faith in you or you put your faith in yourself and you just do it. And I don't know how

else you would learn that. That you have to figure it out, and I think that's really great.

In terms of skills as a leader and just as a person, and figuring out what you want to do

and accomplishing it.

Lorna Kelly and Bill Whiteacre

Lorna - I think if you like to sing you don't have a lot of outlets unless you're involved

with something that is amateur theatre unless you want to be trained and try to become

a professional and that's never been my goal. Mostly it's just a lot of fun.

Bill - First of all you either have to be good or think that you're good and whether you're

really good or whether you only think that you're good it's important for you to express

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yourself no matter what it is, because after all if you have something to say you have to

pick the right medium to say it. If you have to say something that can only be in poem,

then you can't write a novel about it and vice versa.

I was on the constitution committee and we were talking about the question of religion,

and I brought forward the notion that this club only has one religion and that's the arts.

Marianne Fedunkiw

The difference between the projects that work really well and the projects that work less

well are often the passion that the people bring to the projects.

There's a direct correlation between what you put out there and what you get back that

you can then harness to give more, and it's almost on an instantaneous basis. You

always have to be present and in the moment to be able to judge what the audience is

giving you back, 'cos that's why it's live theatre. Otherwise, you do live television--

whether or not the crew laughs is irrespective and you can do another take, another

take, another take. In live performance you can't do that. You have to be able to judge

the emotional climate of the room on an instantaneous, moment-by-moment basis.

I had tickets being sold for a reading in ten days before I had any performers. And it

just proves what passion and a little help from your friends can do. I had one

professional actor participating all the rest were amateurs. They had to find real Serbs

from a local church to perform a text she had written. There was this one fellow who

came out to one rehearsal, and as soon as he found out that it wasn't going to be

demeaning to Serbs he got a couple of friends which included a guy who by day drove a

cab and who would read the role of the grandfather and the Serbian bishop. Another

fellow worked for his parents' hotel and restaurant business, another guy was a student

and this guy had been a Serbian politician before moving to Britain. And it just came

magically together. It was not polished but the emotions were real. And I read the

Canadian part in that because I figured we needed a Canadian accent in it for it to be

believable, to see performers --you know the first guy who came to perform in this--to

see him weep when his character says goodbye to the woman who's playing the lead

character and those tears were real--to have those kinds of moments, that's what

drama's about. And to have the family there from as far away as Ireland, from as far

North as Glasgow. To see the son and the daughter of the woman's whose life we were

portraying right there, sit there in the audience. Total--you know it's one of those you

know, 'I can die happy.' You get those cool moments those synergies, but that's what I

mean by buy-in, you have to have everybody literally, show up and give everything

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they've got irrespective of the fact that they're not professionals. And it made it that

more real. So then we had this reception afterwards so you can have these two

disparate groups: this group of established, British upper-class folk mingling with Anglo-

Serb taxi cab drivers, and they were just fascinated by each other. Because it was

bringing them together ninety years after the event, just as their mother, their

grandmother, their aunt, had met the predecessors of these people, under extraordinary

circumstances, and it was just so heinously cool. And I think that theatre exists; you

know if you see a fight in the check-out line when you're shopping for groceries; that's

real theatre. That's a dramatic moment. So if you can recreate those dramatic

moments for an audience in amateur theatre. That's great. When it breaks down is

when you don't get the same level of commitment. This whole thing, this whole story

could have been a horrible story: it could have been me there with finger puppets acting

out the parts because I didn't get other people who had the passion for the project.

I think sometimes people in the audience will sit there and go, 'well what was that?' You

know, like, 'never, never, never, let her get up and sing again.' And I sit there and I go,

'no.' People have not paid for the after-party performance, so all bets are off and

whatever happens is organic and is magic. There will be some magic that appeals to

people more than other bits of magic. But this is funny because these kinds of

experiences can kind of turn people off of performing.

Mike Spence

I think you're trying to do a quality job and have something that's presentable that really

creates something magical. I've been to a number of adjudications and quite often the

adjudicator will talk about climbing the mountain, in other words you've got to go up

here and you don't always get there, and even if you get part-way, at least you've

improved your own situation and those of your fellow thespians, and you've had a good

time doing it.

I guess every person sees it a little differently, but you can tell when you're in the

audience, when they've been enraptured by the performance. You can tell just the feel

of the auditorium, and if you look around, and I make a habit of looking out from the

corner of my eye a little bit. And you can, I guess maybe the phrase is: they're in there

with rapt attention. They're really focusing. And that's how the actors get feedback and

the energy from the audience and it doesn't have to be a quiet moment I mean it can be

an uproariously funny farce. So you get the feel of it. It's very hard to describe with

words. But it's something you get with live performance that you really don't get with

film or television. It is a onetime occurrence. Every performance is different or slightly

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different, and everybody tries to make it consistent. But audiences are different; no

question about that. So the dynamic changes from night to night. It's not only with

theatre, I've experienced it with musicians and symphony orchestra presentations and

things like that or ballet or opera. So it's all connected by that sort of thread.

On the magic from a backstage perspective: I get it because I'm feeling that I'm in the

moment especially if I'm on a stage crew or stage managing, you make a connection,

firstly with the actors, and you know you're there to support them. There's sort of a

bond there. You're doing it second-hand, I mean obviously you're not out there, but

what you're doing backstage or in a support role has got an impact, it's definitely

effecting how that actor is feeling and that's one of the key issues in the theatre is that

the actors have to have confidence that the backstage people will do their job and will

do it well. And all of the efforts of the backstage production team is going towards

supporting the actors that are telling the story. So there's a real connection there. And

that's when you feel it, you really know when it's working, and you get a feel of the

audience. And that's again, you can tell whether it's working or not, from night to night.


Carol - It's a very individual thing but I would say that people who get involved in public

performing for the joy of it, which is where Morna and I are, you want to spread that joy.

It's almost like the gospel, you know? "Come and see us, you're going to have fun, it's

going to be a fabulous evening, you're going to be toe-tapping, biting your fingernails,

your heart's going to be in your throat" there's this whole gamut of emotions that I think

theatre people can elicit from the audience. For me that's part of the magic.

Morna - I think that's true that the emotion is a very good word there, because it's

not just the audience you're eliciting it from it's the people who are involved in

theatre, I think are more emotional, they may not be more emotional but they're

not afraid to show their emotions in the same way that other folk are.

Morna - I think it's sort of like being on-board ship, if one's ever been on-board ship, you

make very close friends, generally speaking. It's a team that works together, and if you

work together well you may remain friends for life, the people I've met in the theatre, I'm

still in touch with a lot of them. Because you have a shared experience you work with a

shared goal. There are things that didn't go so well and you can laugh about those, you

could enjoy the things that did go well and talk about it sometimes for years afterwards.

Carol - I also think though more that basically when you're in a role (writer, director

etc.), and tempers get frayed, the minute that's over, you put aside that kind of intensity

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and you move on in the same way: the friendships are still there. Where I think

sometimes in life, we don't do that enough. The tensions go home with us and we tend

to play them out and play them out and finally you don't see the person again. I haven't

found that's ever happened to me in something like this. On the other hand: sometimes

I go home, like I did improv about a month or so ago and the only sort of serious part of

that was with somebody I've never done anything with and I got so wrapped up in this, I

was a recovering drug addict supposedly, and my heart was just going like this (motions

a throbbing motion on her chest), and I love that. And people bought into that whole

scenario, it was just one of those things, you know. We created. For me that's the

biggest buzz is that people go home and they say, 'wow,' you know, I never thought

about life like that or I never thought about... you know what I mean? So.

Morna - It brings a different perspective to things.

Certainly I think everybody who contributes to the theatre gets something out of it even

if it's not applause because not everyone wants applause. That's not for everybody. I

know that the writers, and I have done some writing myself, and when you get to see

your show performed onstage it's wonderful, and directing is the same thing, you know,

you bring something to life. The artists who do the sets and the costumes and make the

props, that's what they're interested in and they bring their skills to it so everybody who's

involved contributes a talent that helps bring the project to success, in other words,

have a good show. And that's satisfying for some people, other people want to be

onstage, but I don't think that's the only part of it.


John - But in the end it is really the creativity whether you're acting or whether you're

writing. When you have this desire to create but also to move people. It is to make

people be affected by what you're saying and what you're doing. This is hugely

important. Because one of the basic things of creativity is that you're trying to impose

what you feel about a certain situation on other people through their emotions. Not tell

them but through their emotions.

Karina - You can get into a production where don't get along with anybody: you don't

like the director and everything goes wrong and you just come out of it feeling

miserable. If you can get into a play that you feel good about, you create a friendship

and it's something to look forward to. If you're feeling down and "oh my life's going no

place" you get a chance to do this. And then also, on the night of the performance,

people like it, it just builds you up more. It makes you feel better about yourself. It's like

anyone who does anything [...] it doesn't matter how you express yourself.

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John - You open yourself up. I think it's also the fact that there is an awful lot of

creativity latent in people. I think when you're on stage it fulfills something in your

psyche, your creative psyche.

Rob - To bring creative things out where they might not have come out. There comes

to be an almost unspoken communication that actors will have when they're on the

stage.

It's a real adrenaline rush, and I guess I'd forgotten what that was like since it had been

so long since I'd been on the stage before, but there's a real performer's high.

Performance-wise I think it has the power to bring people who don't do this for a living

up to another level, a better level than they would because they get to see and learn

from osmosis.

John - I think because it's theatre, there is a kind of immediate gratification [...] even for

the stage crew. [later...] We're not all sort of extroverts. We're not necessarily introverts.

But it's rather nice to allow yourself...

Sonia Norris

She explains that theatre offers us an opportunity to "sit down really closely beside a

stranger. That's bizarre. Huh? We don't do that, sit in the dark beside a stranger who

you don't know and touch them because you're so tightly packed in (she says as she

touches the side of her arm), and watch a bunch of people on that stage who you know

are just everyday people in this world, say 'pretend with me, pretend that I'm not who I

really am, pretend that this is not what it really is, it's not just a building it is now a

something else.' And we all go, 'yeah, yeah, yeah, take my money, take me

somewhere else.' It's such a blind act of faith, I think, for an audience to go to a theatre.

That's magic. And I don't think that much theatre actually maximizes on that. I don't

think much theatre really takes us anywhere. But that's the potential and I wish it was

utilized more because I think it's a phenomenal thing to get a bunch of intelligent,

rational, busy people, to sit their bums down in seats in the dark to watch something

that isn't real. There has to be such a desire to be part of some other world, and a world

with other people, for a community. So there's a big craving for it and I think that the

people that go into theatre feel it and the people that come to theatre feel it. have a

desire for it.

Her desire was to "provide an opportunity for youth artists in Zimbabwe to perform at an

international theatre festival that I had been invited to in Harare. And I'd gone there one

year, and taken a show from my company 'The Chaos Factory,' and said 'while I'm here

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if there's anywhere that I can teach workshops I would like to teach workshops outside

of the festival. I want to go into community and teach if there are places that would be

interested.' So they set me up with a number of places and I found that these groups

were unbelievably responsive and phenomenally hungry for anything because

Zimbabwe is a country in total crisis and they have absolutely nothing."

She devised a show from scratch with this ensemble for the next year, which they

performed at this international festival, wherein no native Zimbabweans were actually

performing, only international artists. She worked with "a group of twenty-four artists

between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five," writing this original piece about 'do

they have dreams? How do you have dreams and hopes if you have no future? And

yet if you don't have both, how do you get out of bed in the morning?" She explains her

motivation for the project: "a marginalized community that nobody cares about, nobody

wants to hear what they have to say, nobody's listening to them, nobody's looking at

them, and all of a sudden they had a voice, and they were seen and people came and

paid money to watch them perform on stage, and this blew their minds. Absolutely blew

them away." She explains how this was similar to her CAMH project in that she

"discovered the power of theatre, and of the work that I do because [...] I was having an

effect and that was very gratifying because I didn't dare dream that it could work as

positively as it did and it had a phenomenally powerful effect on transforming twenty-

four young people's lives in Zimbabwe."

Holy crap the power of theatre is phenomenal. The power of passion which is what

theatre is to me (to get anything done in theatre you've got to have a major passion) so

the power of my passion to activate their passion, and then their passion mixed with my

passion to then create this passionate event that then had people laughing and crying in

the audience activating their passion. And through it all when you activate passion you

create connection. You create engagement. And again: a hunger to be part of an event

to be part of a group to cause linkage between human beings. I think that there must be

something very basic and primal about the desire to... you know, you don't create a

baby without a whole bunch of cells and whatnots linking up, merging. I think there's

just a really great strong need for it; and they just came alive.

I've seen a lot of crappy theatre and it hasn't depressed me as profoundly as going to

Summerworks and for some reason I saw show after show after show of just trite crap,

and I finally came out of one production and just everything in me was just defeated.

And my heart was gone for it. And people are in there and they're clapping away. It's

like, 'WHAT?' I feel like standing up in the theatre and screaming at the audience:

'don't. Don't tell them it's good.' But on the other hand my belief very strongly is that it's

not an audience's job to know. I mean they can know what they like or not, but they're

not going to know the degree of what is possible. And I don't mean to make them

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sound stupid they're not, but it bugs me when the artists themselves say this is good

enough. It's not good enough. And so I'm constantly asking of myself what kind of

theatre actually has something to offer in a world where film is way better? It's

accessible, it's cheaper. It's in your house; you don't even need to leave your bloody

living room in order to be entertained because you can get it on ten million channels and

watch your DVDs and stuff. It's on a big screen if you care to pay the money and it

looks fabulous and it's so fun and its extraordinary the places that they go to and the

things that you can see and it's up close in your face so it's easy. Totally easy:

everything laid out in front of you, and so how do we compete with that. There is reason

to compete with it because theatre has something that is totally different, that is it's

power. But it is not to try and do realism the way that film does it. But the magic and

the fantastical possibilities of theatre, that's worth maximizing on, that's worth going

back to and figuring out how access it and how to make magic on stage which is not

about pyrotechnics. You know, films have money to make phenomenal things happen,

it's not about trying to compete with that by doing things flying in from the Gods and stuff

you know, but it is about showing another reality, an altered possibility of life I think is

what theatre has to offer, and a magic that has to do with the immediacy, of another

human being in front of you in that moment looking you in the eye in the audience. And

it doesn't get maximized on and it breaks my heart because we've lost our audience

long ago, this has been going on for so long. It's very few people that even go to

theatre. Mostly you go to theatre and who's sitting in the audience are other theatre

people. That's why we don't get discounts for going because theatres would go

bankrupt completely if theatre artists got a discount. Or you get your upper-middle class

bourgeois theatre. And I'm a big fan of Brecht; that's what I did my thesis on, because I

wanted to investigate the ideas that had turned theatre on its head in his day. How is it

possible to apply that to now, which is not the same as doing it that's why I think Brecht

doesn't work at all when people go "we're really doing Brecht." It's like well that was

great then but it has no relevance now but the need is the same because he was

rebelling against the bourgeois theatre as well, the operetta. Well we have the same

thing going now it's just not operetta. It's intellectually staid theatre where people go,

'ooh lovely,' [mock claps]. And it's great that they have the money to come and that

they do come, bless their hearts but we could give them something better that would

actually wake them up! It is about waking up! It has the power to wake you up.

Whereas I tend to go to film when I don't need to be woken up, I'm looking for an easy

treat. And I love film but it's a totally different thing than going to theatre.

With the Macbeth project at CAMH, I was suddenly in a room with people who were not

trained performers, were not even skilled performers, and yet they had such a desire to

make something happen, to go into another world, to be open to what was possible and

to see if they could do it. To engage. It's about engagement. I think theatre, the art of

acting is about engagement with another actor, with the audience, with yourself so that

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you have something to offer, and we live in a world that is not very engaged. We pride

ourselves on our ability to not be engaged. You're not affected by the world around you

and then you're like a superhero. It's awful. So here was a group of people who didn't

have any skills, any knowledge, and yet they just had a desire, a basic desire, and yet

they had a knowledge that I was interested in about a subject, about a world that I was

interested in which was the world of madness; whatever the extreme behaviours are

that we deem as mad, insane, as not socially acceptable, and I'm interested in things

that are deemed not socially acceptable. Because it's a very small place that we live in,

right, that's acceptable behaviour. And so they had something to offer me that I was

interested in, if they were willing to talk to me about it and they were. They were hungry

to have someone who was interested in their experience of the world, how they walk

through this reality, and it is different than how I walk through it. And how to bring that

then to stage was just for me a very engaging experience and along the way it became

obvious that the way that they work that we were doing, was absolutely therapeutic.

And it wasn't why I got involved in the project but it was obviously a very strong element

of what was going on in the project and I couldn't deny it, even though it wasn't what my

main interest was. And I saw these people blossom, which is absolutely what my

interest is, when I work with students and actors, is to see them come alive, and I

watched confidence being built and self-awareness happening as they walked through

territory that they had never walked through before, they realized things that they never

thought they could do, and they realized that people were interested in what they had to

say. And they realized that they could do something. Like as simple as that: that they

actually could make something happen and we're not useless. And unfortunately a lot

of people who are out-patients from any mental institution don't think it's just CAMH, a

large issue that they have I found, talking to a lot of them and doing some research, is

that they don't have a value in society. There completely ignored, you know, we don't

want to talk to the crazy people on the street, they're a pain in the ass, they bug us, they

might be dangerous, they scare us because we don't understand how the mind works

etcetera, etcetera, we don't understand their behaviour, they're bizarre, stay away, and

I'm busy, get out of my way. And they know that. And if they can't hold down a job then

they have no useful purpose in society, and I think we absolutely, we're here on Earth to

have a useful purpose. And without it, well, what gets you out of bed in the morning?

What tells you what to do after lunch? And before dinner? There's nothing for them to

hold on to. And these are all huge generalizations I know, but this is the information I

got from the people I was working with. And suddenly they were in an environment

where they made something happen and it was tangible, they saw it, it ended up on

stage, people paid and came to see it. They saw photographs of it and went, 'wow,

that's me, I made that happen.' That's powerful, you know, in a world where you can feel

really, really powerless, and very, very, very, small. So that was a real gift for me to be

part of that, and to see that the power and the effect of theatre on the lives of a certain

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sector of society, to have an incredibly positive effect on them, and it made me re-

evaluate my own interests in theatre and it made me question why I so adamantly have

said I'm not interested in amateur theatre and I'm not interested in theatre as therapy

when all of a sudden I absolutely was, I was passionate about offering anything that I

could to people who wanted to learn it in order to transform them. And that's a powerful

thing.

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Appendix 4 - Interview Transcripts on "Community"

David Skene-Melvin

Theatre is not like team sports: because a team sport is much more rigid. Centralized.

You're all doing the same thing. Whereas theatre; every production with different

performers or different companies, is a different production. Every soccer game is

exactly the same, but every game is also different in its outcome. But there are only so

many things a soccer player can do. Whereas, you can have two productions of the

same play, and your experiences can be entirely different. Live theatre is much more

expressive, entertaining and enlightening than cinema. Really well done theatre

production can really lift you and excite you. Even night after night you are going to

have little differences, even with the same performers. Your performers are always

going to be reacting to what they get back and some nights, the jokes will go absolutely

flat, and other nights you don't even have a chance to do the punch line because the

audience is already laughing. It's that immediacy and the dynamic that makes live

theatre so much more fascinating and interesting. And to be inside it, to be a part of it,

for me, I'm just not someone who is just content to sit in the audience. I want to

involved.

You can have organizations where you have people who do have special skills and

special abilities, that will all work together as a unit for a specific purpose: an army with

engineers and signallers and infantrymen, and artillerymen. Yes but that's not the same

as reading a kind of communitarianism that you get with a theatre group because you all

are really absolutely dependent on each other. If for example, if you don't have, if you

are the stage crew and you don't put the furniture in the right place for a scene-change

you're going to have a disaster with production. So you do have to have a high degree

of trust, co-operation, and exactness, that you're going to get it right, and you're going to

take pride in getting it right, both the performers and the crew.

The notion of need has not come forward to me out to me in anything I've heard from

members of the theatre community. Their concern has always been the practical one: 'if

we don't get enough people, then we can't put on the show.'

Jane Carnwath

The main problem is that because most of the people have other commitments, you get

a very mixed level of expertise and training, which is both the good news, and a

challenge, but that's about the main... it's sometimes hard to staff a show. To find

people to do the various jobs that need to be done, because people have lives.

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Sometimes we think we may have bitten off more than we can chew but it's always

worked out. The payoff is doing really interesting work, and it is a community, so it isn't

just people coming together to do a play and just dispersing, although it is a bit of that,

but there is a bit more of a continuity if you continue to be involved with the same group

and so people come back. There is a lot of recidivism in community theatre. There is

nothing in my experience that brings people together than a shared project that you

both(or all) have a huge commitment to. You form life-long relationships and I find that

very fulfilling.

A lot of what I did when I was teaching in the high schools and at the post-secondary

level, I did a lot of work with socially-based theatre, what we used to call collective

creation where the participants would do a lot of research, interviewing and so on, and

then create theatre out of it. for them at least it was a consciousness-raising

experience. Since then I always I'm a little nervous about saying it's socially significant,

because I don't know to be honest, that is a reason why I do it. But message-driven art

I think is a very tricky.

John Goddard

The thing about theatre, unlike many other art forms is you can't practice it on your own.

You have to become part of a group.

I don't like the analogy of course of the battlefield of course because I think of that being

destructive as opposed to what we're doing which is creative and constructive. I think

there are two stages to it: while you are involved in the process there is a really, really

high degree of mutual dependence and interconnectedness because you're all

participating in the creative act. I also find that when it's over and given a little time, it

doesn't always stay. When you're involved in the show and you're really involved with

these people and you go out after the show drinking with them and you're just, you're

forming a real bond. Six months later--it doesn't always---more often than not the same

bond does not exist because the glue that held you together, the creative process, the

work that you were creating is now gone. And of course that's the other thing about the

performing arts, is it's a live performance and when it's over it's over, you can't go back

to it. And taking a video of it does not in any way re-create the live performance. So

that's another aspect of it is that when it's gone I often find that that really strong bond of

community also disintegrates to a large extents. It is then re-created in the next time

you do a show, and with the next group that you work with.

Julia Lederer

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I like theatre in high school but I didn't do a lot of it because I was kind of afraid to be an

actor and in high school there aren't a lot of opportunities to do other things, but then I

went to university I went to this small university called the University of King's college

which is right beside Dalhousie and since it's such a small school all the student run

societies are really active, and so there was a friend from high school who lived down

the hall from me and said, 'oh, do you want to direct a play,' and I was like, 'okay.' And

we did and I just really loved it. I'd sort of dabbled in it before and helped friends with

productions but I'd never spearheaded anything and so that was a huge learning curve

but it was great and from there I went into theatre studies. And as a playwright, like I've

always been a writer and so there was kind of a moment in third year in playwriting

class when those two things sort of clicked together. I just love storytelling and it's so

nice to get to actively share that, in such a sort of present, personal way with people. I

love to read to but I love active engagement, and I like costumes and playing and

having fun too.

In terms of community theatre, and what I love about it is that everyone is just doing it

because they love it. And there are these very sophisticated set-ups and institutions

within a community, and everyone has a different job and they bring different

experiences. It's just really fun because of the sheer joy in doing it and it's really nice

sometimes to be reminded of that and that that still happens because you can get so

caught up in trying to "make a smart career move" whatever that even means, right?

And impressing the right people and being sort of within a business mindset within

something that you used to because they loved it. And so it's really fun to go to

community theatre and remind yourself of that. And it's just a really neat way to bring

people together and have them work on the same project, but also brings joy to the

people that are watching it because they know people in it, and it's a lot of fun, it's great.

Ken Judd

(Describing his first and only time onstage) - It's kind of hard to explain; it was short, I

had very short lines, which is what I wanted. It was alright. I am used to speaking in

front of people, that wasn't my nervous part. I was nervous about screwing up line that I

would not be able to remember, that was my biggest fear. But as far as talking in front

of people, I've been doing it all through my business career, that does not bother me. It

was fun. My kids were quite impressed, they came to the show that night and they

never thought they would see their father on the stage.

Lorna Kelly, Bill Whiteacre in conversation with Jenna Rocca

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Lorna - But don't you also believe that there is the generous attitude that if someone

comes forward we want to include them because they don't want to send them away

feeling bad? I think they're much more generous than you do.

Bill - Well that's the excuse they give.

JR - Well aren't you personally a recipient of that kind of generosity by submitting pieces

that--

Bill - Not at all, we are judged very severely. There isn't any year where everything that

I have submitted has been accepted. Now that has to do with not wanting one writer to

have too much, unless that writer is also a member of the theatre committee.

JR - Isn't this one of the benefits of amateur theatre? Or is it detrimental because some

artists are not given the opportunity that they deserve.

Bill - Yes, you get more people involved, but the members who actually attend don't get

as high a quality of a production.

Lorna - People will never come up to me about something that went on at the board

meeting. But they will certainly come up and talk to me about something that happens

in the Spring Revue, because it makes you approachable. They see you there and they

can come up and talk to you about the performance, and you create another liaison with

someone in the club. I think that the fact that you're willing to in many cases make a

fool of yourself and get up there and do something stupid or not do it well shows a

certain strange part of your own character, and I think just by putting yourself out there it

makes you seem more approachable.

And when we're down in the change room and we're changing costumes we, if

somebody's having trouble getting into something we help them, and there's a

closeness developed with that group, so that's part of it as well. So I feel fairly close to

the people that were in the show. And even the people who change the sets and get

props and all that kind of thing are essential, and you feel a closeness to them as well.

So it's because you're all part of the same thing you want the whole production to

succeed so therefore whether you're in front of the stage or not you enjoy it.

Marianne Fedunkiw

She explains that one of the defining characteristics of putting on a show is that

"everyone has to show up."

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My buzz is working with people because otherwise I'm working on my own all the time

and in all honesty--(sigh).

There's one fellow who, you know, he came to a meeting about a performance that we

were going to give, and he was basically auditioning for the job of the guy that opens

and closes the curtain, and the woman organizing it said, 'you know what, why don't you

read a little part here'--he got a part, he got one of the four leads. So it's that sort of

openness (available in amateur theatre).

Mike Spence

I think there are a lot of advantages in terms of the people connections. Disadvantages,

I guess the time commitment, when you decide to get involved in a production you kind

of tie up your life for six to eight weeks. And you have to make sure you can manage

that. And also you got to realize it's not only you it's all the other people.

I guess I got the sort of bug early on and every experience most of the time has been

positive and reinforcing. I have a lot of thank-you cards in my file at home which just

say "okay, it was a good thing to do that." I've gotten much more back from the

theatrical community than I've given. I think anyway. So that's what keeps me going is

the feedback and the relationships that you develop with a lot of very neat people over

the years.

I think that's part of the process: it's a one of a kind kind of thing in that it evolves around

someone taking a leadership position and saying "I want to put on a play; I want to tell a

story". And so you're involved with something that's bigger than yourself, and that's one

of the big attractions. That you're in this to make a contribution to an experience that

the audience will hopefully enjoy or not, you get some pretty good feedback when you're

finally in a production. But I think it's the human condition in that we all crave support

from our fellow travellers in this journey of life and this is one way of getting it. I'm not at

all surprised that the amateur theatre has survived and expanded as has the

professional theatre in Canada. In 2009 it is a lot bigger than when I started back in the

1940s, 1950s. So I think that's progress. And I think it's better for society too.

Everybody knows that you're dependent, not only on your own skills and talents, but

those of others. And obviously in the acting profession they've got to have a really high

degree of confidence that they can interact with each other and I've seen it work really

well and I've seen it fall apart. It's a little like a high-wire act, and everyone has to keep

their balance and away you go.

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There are all these sort of human personality dynamics going on and they all have to

work together towards a common goal and as I say most of the time that's what

happens. And you've got to be aware of the emotional content and all the rest of it, and

if somebody's had a bad day at the office, you've got to be aware of that too.

It's a people business; it's about storytelling but it's also about the people who are doing

the story-telling.

The human connections; the friendships that have built up over the years. And I've

been very, very lucky in terms of my exposure to community theatre right across the

country, and the connections are still there.

You'll find that people tend to want to work with the same people over and over, if you

have a good experience it reinforces. You tend to have your favourites. Once you get

established, people know your track record. That takes you a long way. It is that bond

that because you've been involved in a common purpose and a common endeavour

and you've shared some of the tough days as well as the glory days, I think that's a very

good analogy: it's a band of brothers and sisters and the bonding that goes on is really

breathtaking sometimes.


Morna - In community theatre you really have to muck-in and do the whole thing so I

think it's much more of a team effort because it takes a lot of people to do things. It

really is a community of people working together for a certain object, which is a show.

You meet a good cross-current of people, I mean you all have a fundamental interest in

theatre, but you also find that they have other outside interests that are different from

yours. Whereas if you're a professional, those people are very theatre-oriented and

may not have the same range of outside occupations.

We had a doctor in my community theatre, and if you happen to be doing some kind of

a play that had a medical component then that might contribute to that, otherwise you

might have to hire the expertise so there's that kind of thing. And people input that

without being paid they don't have to hire someone else. So I guess the cost

component is one of the advantage.

One of the things is the people. I really like theatre people. My mother was one. I've

been around theatre people all my life and I've always enjoyed them. They're a fun

group to be with. Live theatre, there is something magical about it, and if you can help

make it happen that's even better.

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I think it's sort of like being on-board ship, if one's ever been on-board ship, you make

very close friends, generally speaking. It's a team that works together, and if you work

together well you may remain friends for life, the people I've met in the theatre, I'm still

in touch with a lot of them. Because you have a shared experience you work with a

shared goal. There are things that didn't go so well and you can laugh about those, you

could enjoy the things that did go well and talk about it sometimes for years afterwards.

Carol - I also think though more that basically when you're in a role (writer, director

etc.), and tempers get frayed, the minute that's over, you put aside that kind of intensity

and you move on in the same way: the friendships are still there. Where I think

sometimes in life, we don't do that enough. The tensions go home with us and we tend

to play them out and play them out and finally you don't see the person again. I haven't

found that's ever happened to me in something like this. On the other hand: sometimes

I go home, like I did improv about a month or so ago and the only sort of serious part of

that was with somebody I've never done anything with and I got so wrapped up in this, I

was a recovering drug addict supposedly, and my heart was just going like this (motions

a throbbing motion on her chest), and I love that. And people bought into that whole

scenario, it was just one of those things, you know. We created. For me that's the

biggest buzz is that people go home and they say, 'wow,' you know, I never thought

about life like that or I never thought about... you know what I mean? So...

Morna - It brings a different perspective to things. Certainly I think everybody who

contributes to the theatre gets something out of it even if it's not applause because not

everyone wants applause. That's not for everybody. I know that the writers, and I have

done some writing myself, and when you get to see your show performed onstage it's

wonderful, and directing is the same thing, you know, you bring something to life. The

artists who do the sets and the costumes and make the props, that's what they're

interested in and they bring their skills to it so everybody who's involved contributes a

talent that helps bring the project to success, in other words, have a good show. And

that's satisfying for some people, other people want to be onstage, but I don't think

that's the only part of it.


Rob - That's why the club is such a nice group actually, because it's got some pros, that

belong, and some retired pros, people who have stepped back from the life but want to

keep a hand in it, and for the most part they're always happy to mentor and encourage

people that they know don't have their background. They're almost to a person,

encouraging and willing to go out. There have been one or two who are not and you

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sort of learn that okay, you give them their space, and they want to come in here, do

their bit, and go, there's no harm in that.

It adds a lot to my life, I've made a lot of friends at the club and almost all of them, up to

a point have been in the stage group. This was my support group when my marriage

destroyed itself. Betty Trott said to him, when he was considering backing out of his

commitment to the Revue because of his divorce, 'it would be an absolute mistake for

you to drop out now when you're about to go into a divorce, and all the nastiness that

comes with that. You need something that can take you away from everything that's

going on in your regular life, allow you to put it aside, do something else, where you'll

focus, where you'll concentrate, where you'll put your energies and not have to worry for

a few hours, about all that other stuff.' For a few blissful hours, I could be the guy who's

struggling with the umbrella at the bus-stop, or the Newfoundland fisherman who's

trying to get a loan from the government, instead of being who I actually was, and there

are times when being who you actually are isn't the greatest thing. It's escapism

sometimes, in a very good way.

Here at the club it seems to be very much a team thing. And often times people who

join the club will do that. They'll join the club because they want to make friends, they

want to be part of a team that does something, whether it's putting together this kind of

an art show on the walls, because this kind of a show requires more than people who

just do the paintings. All sorts of people will join the club and will join the backstage

crew because they want to be involved with something.

We have a tension in this club over the Spring Revue. A tension at the best of times

and a balance at the worst of times. Because there are people, and you know, we'll get

different people directing the Spring Revue and some directors tend more towards the--

I'm going to call it the professional end of things and that is their job, as they see it, to

put on the best possible show, the most entertaining show for the crowds we have, with

the available people. So that might mean shortening the cast, not being as inclusive as

you could, casting your best material with your best people and leaving the slightly

questionable things out or relegating them to spots where you think they might not do

any harm in the programme. Whereas other people will lean more towards the other

way and that is, 'this is a show about involving people, about giving people a chance to

do things they wouldn't otherwise get to do,' so it's not that they will say 'entertainment

and audience be damned' but they will say, 'we've only got one part for this person and

I'm not asking them to come out to say two lines and do one part in one skit. Can we

find something else for them?' And I've been in the production group that's done this

show and it's a real balancing act to try and say, 'here's somebody we know would

really do a brilliant job in this part--' Oh! And as it turns out John Rammell walks in as

I'm saying 'doing a brilliant job in the part,' as he's done so many times. --versus, 'here's

someone who we think they're sort of under-worked in this show and maybe they won't

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give as good a performance as that other person can but maybe they'll be okay and

they'll learn something out of it and next year they'll be that much better.'

There comes to be an almost unspoken communication that actors will have when

they're on the stage. To put the other bookend on my divorce story, I mentioned that I

found out she was leaving the day we had our first rehearsal; the day that she actually

moved out was the day the show closed. So I had the performer's adrenaline vanish:

'the show is over.' And then I came home, opened the door, and half the stuff is gone--I

felt like I was walking into a barn. I don't want to sound overly dramatic but if it wasn't

for my folks and if it wasn't for friends like John and Karina and all the other people that I

interacted with over the show, who knows what depths I would have gone to. It was a

damn depressing time as it was, but knowing that it wasn't all there was to my life was

very, very important.

John - You knew that we were here and that you weren't on your own.

Karina - And I think also because it's a struggle, it's like an army troop, you struggle and

you fight and you come out of it and you make it, I think that makes you closer to

somebody than somebody you just sit down and have a cup of coffee with. Because

you've fought, you've gone through that battle, and I think that strengthens--not always--

there's a few people I've come out and said 'I don't ever want to see that person as long

as I live.'

John - But another thing of course is that you are doing it within a warm fuzzy

relationship of a team, because you know, one person can let the team down.

Rob - You have friendships that are formed in battle. You've been out there and you've

gone through the good performances and you've helped someone through the bad and

they've helped you through the bad times and you know.

John - Actually the metaphor of the battle is quite true. I mean it is a battle, you're

either going to survive or not. And actually survive because if you don't survive, you're

not surviving in front of an awful lot of people.

Rob - Sometimes the crowd is just not with you and you've had to struggle and slog and

fight for every tiny laugh you can squeeze out of them, so you've been through that

experience and you've been through the ones where every line was met with uproarious

laughter.

Karina - I think that's why people get depressed at the end of a show. Because you

become so involved with these people, and then all of a sudden--pow--there's no

rehearsal, there's no nothing. You're just sort of like, 'now what do I do?' And I think

that's the down side to it. And it's the good side of being in a repertoire theatre group -

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but if you're in a show and you've worked for a couple of months on it, and then you run

it for a couple of weeks, or whatever and then it's over and you just go (shrugs).

You can get into a production where don't get along with anybody: you don't like the

director and everything goes wrong and you just come out of it feeling miserable. If you

can get into a play that you feel good about, you create a friendship and it's something

to look forward to. If you're feeling down and "oh my life's going no place" you get a

chance to do this. And then also, on the night of the performance, people like it, it just

builds you up more. It makes you feel better about yourself. It's like anyone who does

anything [...] it doesn't matter how you express yourself.

Ruth Morawetz

It's a very difficult and subtle division. I try to help the amateurs, but it's a slow business

because they never remember what you say--the corrections you give them--so it's a

slow procedure, contrary to the professional who remembers what you say and does it.

So I find this very exasperating, on the other hand it's very rewarding, to see the

amateurs rise and be challenged and the joy they get in doing it. The most satisfaction I

get is working with professionals. But it becomes one big family and we're all there to

have fun. We do establish a community, they become our friends, our circle of friends,

we see them socially apart from the shows, yeah, it's a community that we enjoy.

Sonia Norris

She was asked to come on board for a project that was being run out of CAMH to teach

and direct mask work to the patients for a production "exploring themes of madness in

Macbeth." A few of the company were professional actors, the rest were out-patients

with mental issues of "one sort or another." She was interested in the "opportunity for

meeting" for "dialogue and communication with a group of people that [she] would not

normally have that possibility with." She feels that in general "people come to it for a

multitude of reasons" but that the "people who thrive in it," and who "have a compulsion"

for it, amateur or professional, are driven back to it by "a desire to be in community."

She likens it to "extreme crisis situations that form bonding, that goes above and

beyond the every day," saying that "we are really desperately hungry for that kind of

strong connection because we live in a world that is more and more isolating us."

Continuing, she says, "we have the luxury in North America of severe isolation. We live

in a bubble of solitude which is a big problem that I see happening in North America

with walkmans etc." She thinks that it is a "really big problem that is growing. Although

on one hand we love all of that [...] there's another part of us that is craving connection

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because it doesn't get it. So I think that a really important element of theatre that needs

to re-emerge even more at this point in time in society is the fact that it creates

community for the people involved who are in the creation of the theatrical production,

but also in the moment as then the audience then enters the space that the company

has created and altogether then another community is created. Every single night a

larger community is created by the audience coming together with the company of

actors because by the time you get to putting that show on, the strength of the

ensemble that is possible if they're actually working well together has a power that

emanates off of them, is what I believe. So that when you walk into a theatrical space,

as an audience member, you should palpably feel that you're coming into a place that

has a different energy that makes you go 'waa now I'm part of this.' It's another world.

We go to the theatre to be transformed, I really believe. To be transformed to a different

place, otherwise we would stay home and watch TV which keeps us very much in our

world."

And I saw these people blossom, which is absolutely what my interest is, when I work

with students and actors, is to see them come alive, and I watched confidence being

built and self-awareness happening as they walked through territory that they had never

walked through before, they realized things that they never thought they could do, and

they realized that people were interested in what they had to say. And they realized

that they could do something. Like as simple as that: that they actually could make

something happen and we're not useless. And unfortunately a lot of people who are

out-patients from any mental institution don't think it's just CAMH, a large issue that they

have I found, talking to a lot of them and doing some research, is that they don't have a

value in society. They're completely ignored, you know, we don't want to talk to the

crazy people on the street, they're a pain in the ass, they bug us, they might be

dangerous, they scare us because we don't understand how the mind works etcetera,

etcetera, we don't understand their behaviour, they're bizarre, stay away, and I'm busy,

get out of my way. And they know that. And if they can't hold down a job then they

have no useful purpose in society, and I think we absolutely, we're here on Earth to

have a useful purpose. And without it, well, what gets you out of bed in the morning?

What tells you what to do after lunch? And before dinner? There's nothing for them to

hold on to. And these are all huge generalizations I know, but this is the information I

got from the people I was working with. And suddenly they were in an environment

where they made something happen and it was tangible, they saw it, it ended up on

stage, people paid and came to see it. They saw photographs of it and went, 'wow,

that's me, I made that happen.' That's powerful, you know, in a world where you can feel

really, really powerless, and very, very, very, small. So that was a real gift for me to be

part of that, and to see that the power and the effect of theatre on the lives of a certain

sector of society, to have an incredibly positive effect on them, and it made me re-

evaluate my own interests in theatre and it made me question why I so adamantly have

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said I'm not interested in amateur theatre and I'm not interested in theatre as therapy

when all of a sudden I absolutely was, I was passionate about offering anything that I

could to people who wanted to learn it in order to transform them. And that's a powerful

thing.

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Appendix 5: Why the Arts and Letters Club?

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Appendix 6: Information on the Individual Interview Participants

Bill Whiteacre spent forty-five years as a lawyer but got into writing skits when he

joined the ALC. He wrote plays in undergraduate university where he also studied

English.

Karina Rammel is a municipal worker who discovered theatre sitting on her father's

(John's) knee at the Palladium in London seeing Peter Pan as a child.

Carol Miles has been involved in community theatre in the past, since about the age of

ten and now at the ALC. In England she "did a lot of pantomime" where the "Dame" was

always a professional but the rest of the cast was amateur and she is currently a nurse

by profession. She also sang in "smoky coffee bars, in London." She has done theatre

"fairly sporadically" throughout her life. She takes classes with Morna Wales as well.

David Skene-Melvin is a professional librarian, and has had no professional theatre

training but enthusiastically patronized live theatre from an early age. He got involved in

amateur theatre when in university, through community groups, as an actor and

continued in New Zealand with similar groups as a volunteer stage manager. At the

ALC he stage manages, constructs sets, and has done some acting.

Dora Rust-D'Eye trained and practiced as a nurse, but after taking maternity leave in

the early eighties, she "fell into theatre very serendipitously." She started by

volunteering for the school where her daughter took dance lessons, making the

costumes, and finding she had a knack for it she just continued on with them, and they

quickly became Opera Atelier. This then became her full-time position, having a roster

of students who worked with her on their costumes and going on to lecture at theatre

schools all over Ontario. She does costumes for the ALC theatre group now that she is

retired.

Jane Carnwath taught theatre in high schools in Toronto professionally. She had also

worked with the Alumnae theatre as an actor. She achieved her Masters in directing at

York, then found that was where her passion was and mostly did that up until currently,

mainly with the Alumnae theatre, which is a community theatre but a kind of stepping

stone for professionals. She taught at Sheridan as well. Technically a theatre

professional but has done quite a lot of amateur work, particularly with the ALC. She

says she knew "at ten years old that whatever she wanted to do would be in the

theatre."

John Goddard is Executive Director of Theatre Ontario, and has previously been

involved administratively for professional theatre in Toronto as actor, treasurer,

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president, and director throughout his whole life. He also has "been involved in amateur

theatre" for most of his life, "It's a passion. It's something that I need to express. It's

something that you can't suppress."

John Rammell is a semi-retired freelance writer who enjoyed a career in Corporate

Communications. He realized he wanted to be a writer after discovering acting at the

age of 20, as he initially pursued sheep farming in New Zealand, "I changed my mind

after I found the stage [...] it was the most thrilling moment of my 20 years; I never knew

anything like it," noting, however that "so much is luck." "There was a huge sort of

release-I was--what?--twenty--huge release. A whole wonderful feeling of

empowerment and creative excitement."

Julia Lederer is a graduate of Dalhousie University who studied theatre in the practical

sense. She has also done a Masters degree in Theatre Studies at U of T. She

considers herself a writer first and then an actor and is pursuing theatre professionally

while always being involved in amateur productions as a stepping stone. She has stage

managed at Summerworks, and has produced the Paprika Festival, an amateur youth

theatre program at the Tarragon Theatre for three years. She has also done a number

of Fringe and amateur productions on an ongoing basis.

Ken Judd is retired from the food business and has never been involved in the arts. He

works backstage building sets and changing sets in between scenes at the ALC. He

was introduced to the club by Ruth about five years ago.

Lorna Kelly is the retired chair of interior design at Ryerson, a position she held for ten

years. She has been involved in amateur theatre since the age of ten and is an active

participant at the ALC.

Marianne Fedunkiw explains that when you come to theatre, you bring it all to theatre.

Marianne's first time on stage was at the age of three, dressed as a flower in a

production at Toronto's Ukrainian cultural centre, reciting a poem. She formally started

studying theatre in high school drama classes and the allure of that world has never

been lost on her.

Mike Spence has had a thirty-six year career with Ontario Hydro as an engineer but

has taken the odd weekend class in theatre, and also taught stage management and

set construction in the sixties. He first got involved in high school and started doing

extra-curricular backstage work for community projects in university. He runs his own

small company called Entertainment Support Services through which he freelances.

He currently works a great deal at the Alumnae Theatre where he started in 1962.

There he does set construction and lighting design, in addition to being the volunteer

Properties Manager. He also contributes in these capacities at the ALC.

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Morna Wales is a retired teacher, has worked in banking, and "finished up as a project

manager." Mainly is a performer in her amateur endeavours at the ALC. She takes

musical theatre classes in various forms, but she has done all the work involved in

putting on a show behind-the-scenes at one point or another. She has done some

professional work.

Rob Prince is a medical copy editor coming from a PhD background in Canadian

History. He has also worked as an editor for a multi-media company and has no

training in theatre but did do some stuff in public school but hadn't been active until

coming to the Arts and Letters Club (ALC). He got on the stage at the club for the first

time in 1993.

Ruth Morawetz is a professional pianist and vocal, and has been a part of the theatrical

activities at the club for about eight years.

Sonia Norris She has explored themes of madness in Macbeth through mask work with

patients at CAMH. I Have a Dream!... is a show she created with 24 youth artists in

Zimbabwe through the Chaos Factory, of which she is the Artistic Director. She also

teaches drama at the University of Windsor.

Vrenia Ivonoffski is the Artistic Director of ACT II STUDIO at Ryerson University a

Continuing Studies program for older and/or retired individuals who are mostly

amateurs. She has an M.A. from U of T and went through Ryerson Theatre School's

directing program as well as Ecole Internationale Jacques Lecoq, Paris for acting. She

currently teaches Acting at George Brown Theatre School. She has directed over thirty

plays professionally .

Wilson West came by the ALC one day after work and was a bit interested in the

"backstage stuff" related to theatre, as at the time they were auditioning for a musical.

"Curtain-pulling" is what he "called it." He ended up auditioning and being cast as one

of the leads. He said because "they kept saying, it's fine" and that he "was okay," he

just continued and all his "in-bred insecurities" were thus overthrown. He is an historian

by trade. He works for the Office of the Fairness Commission for the Ministry of

Citizenship and Immigration. He has a Ph.D. in Naval History. He says of his job, it "is

not rewarding work, I'm just doing it."

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Appendix 7: Note about Public Copies of this Project

There are ## copies of this paper and the accompanying film, for future research use.

One of these is available to the public and is stored in the Archives at the Arts and

Letters Club.

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